This must be the worst book written by a Nobel Prize winning author in the history of the award. The main character is thoroughly petty and dislikable, and the sex and violence in the book are incredibly vulgar. This novel is a memorable one for me, but for the wrong reasons. ( )

I found the story difficult to put down, yet I simultaneously disliked it. On the one hand, I understood and felt for the piano teacher. On the other, I found her lack of motivation to change her situation completely incomprehensible. My prof said that's because her issues were European, and many Americans wouldn't understand it. Who knows. It's still worth a read though. ( )

Erika Kohut is a 38-year-old piano teacher who shares an apartment with her mother. A mother who seems to live through her daughter, micromanaging every aspect of her life right down to the clothes she wears and what happens to her wages. She bullies, screams, slaps, and shouts at her daughter while simultaneously declaring her love and that all her words and actions stem from her love for her offspring.

Erika appears to remain the perfect daughter while struggling with both sadistic and masochistic tendencies. She ventures to a seedy part of town to take in a peep show after work sometimes, visits the cinema to view brutal, dark and violent movies featuring S&M, other times she prefers spying on unsuspecting lovers in the woods. When a 17 year old student of hers shows an interest in her and also displays an unwillingness to give up on his desires she wonders if this could be the one, the man with the unbending will, the one who can give her all she needs and who will understand her darkest desires.

A friend of mine, who lives overseas, had mentioned this book to me a few times. I finally bought it and I am so thankful I did. So many books can lose a certain quality when being translated to other languages (A prime example is the Mercy Room which I reviewed a while ago) but The Piano Teacher is certainly not one of those books. I read it from cover to cover within 48 hours. It was one of those books that left me wishing I didn't need sleep and could just stay up and finish it. In an ideal world I would have done just that.

The writing is fantastic, the characters are excellently developed, and the reader can't help but be pulled in by the story. As I was reaching the last few pages, I wished that the book could have magically sprouted a few more chapters. This is my first book by this author but it will definitely not be my last. I love the cover on this book too. ( )

This review will be very, very short, because I really disliked this book and was unable to finish it. Erika Korhut is a young woman who, having failed in pursuit of a career as a concert pianist, now teaches piano in Vienna. She lives with her domineering mother who controls every aspect of Erika's life. Erika has no friends, and no romantic relationships, and her mother ensures it stays that way. At the time I abandoned this book, Erika was already engaged in self-destructive behavior, which was about to continue through a relationship with one of her students. But I found the characters lacked depth and were completely dispicable. I didn't care what happened to Erika and was really disappointed by this work from a Nobel prize-winning author.

Maybe the signature work of the Austrian Nobelist--The Piano teacher is certainly a unique look under the covers of sexual repression. Jelinek's prosestyle seems to have much in common with her fellow Austrian Thomas Bernhard--it oozes out with an almost misanthropic intent. Erika and her mother live in an apartment in Vienna. Erika has a room but no bed--she sleeps with her mother. Mama controls almost every aspect of Erika's life. Erika has reached her mid 30's and is a music professor and piano teacher. She is also a virgin seething beneath the control her mother exerts over her life. Buying clothes that she never wears that her Mother ridicules. Erika is an emotional mess and her Mother plays on these emotions like a virtuoso performer. Into theirs lives comes one Walter Klemmer--an athelete, womanizer and an excellent musician in his own right. Though much younger than Erika--Walter decides on a program to seduce Erika, have an affair and then as is his past practice, dump her and go on to newer and greener pastures. Little does he know that behind Erika's repressed facade lurks a secret fantasy life that yearns to be completely dominated, abused and abased. Erika agrees to become his lover (cutting her mother brutally out of her life) on condition that he treat her like a 'thing'--that he torture and abuse her body. She spells these out in a letter that leaves Walter completely non-plussed. He--thinking it is some kind of a sick joke walks away initially but confronted by Erika later on--tries but fails to have sex with her. This failure throws him into doubts about himself--resulting finally by stoking his almost inhuman rage in the last pages--finally bursting into Erika's apartment--locking Erika's mother in her bedroom, and beating Erika severely (broken nose and a broken rib) and then raping her.

Erika's confusion over what she ever wanted, her day to day resentments, her own self abuse (she often privately cuts or otherwise hurts herself), her dependency on a dominating figure, her feelings of frustration and hatred towards the otherwise normal people that surround her every day in Vienna--a city rich in culture in which with her talent she should shine is all part of the bleak background of a damaged life. Rendered in a blackly humorous prose and with a kind of exasperated sarcasm boiling beneath the surface Jelinek clearly shows why she's regarded so highly by many of her peers. Now and again though while reading this I did get a little bored. 280 pages of anger and resentment have to be treated very carefully. At times when her black humor takes the back seat it can be a bit much. Thankfully that is not all that often and this is a book I would very much recommend.

One other note: though it may not have any bearing on the author's own life there are elements of this novel that seem to conform to her own background. ( )