The End of Days

Essentially, this is the ubiquitous "20th century German history novel", looking at two world wars, the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of communism through episodes in the life of a character whose life-span covers most of the century. The central character obviously draws to some extent on the life-story of Erpenbeck's grandmother, the communist poet and playwright Hedda Zinner (also born in pre-WWI Galicia, a party member in the 20s and 30s, exiled in Russia during the Nazi period, lived in East Germany from 1945, and died not long after the Wende).

With a few extra complications thrown in - a Jewish grandmother, a couple of absent fathers, and some interesting locations - this would have given most German novelists more than enough show more material for a 600-page epic (or 1200 if it was Günther Grass). Erpenbeck does it - very elegantly - in under 300, and makes it all much more interesting by bringing in a risky structural device in which the fully developed story-line in each episode turns out to be a "what if it all ended here?" dead end, with an intermezzo before the next section of the book to sketch out a simpler version of the story that allows us to go on to the next episode. She uses this to explore the arbitrary, chancy nature of real life - or, more to the point, of death - and its contrast to the organising power of narrative. It sounds like a gimmick, but I found it works surprisingly well. And someone who writes as well and elegantly as Erpenbeck can probably get away with almost anything...

The book does have its quirks, but I found them endearing rather than off-putting. Erpenbeck obviously doesn't much like giving her characters names, which makes the first part of the story rather hard work for the reader, because we don't have one single point of reference and the character who is "die Mutter" in one paragraph can easily become "die Tochter" or "die Großmutter" in the next, as we shift to a different point of view. It's worth persevering, though, because the characters become less generic as we go on (by the last chapter, the central character has even acquired a surname!). And of course she's a director, so, as in Heimsuchung, there's a lot of business with stage-props of various kinds. If you say in the first chapter that there's an edition of Goethe on the wall, then - well, you know how it goes. show less

The subjunctive conditional has a lot to answer for. If A had done x then perhaps B would still be alive. It’s the kind of choice that novelists have to make all the time. Indeed it’s why we sometimes describe writing as an existential project (certainly for the character being created, and sometimes, sure, for the novelist). In this novel, Jenny Erpenbeck reneges on her responsibility to choose by simply choosing again. An infant girl dies almost inexplicably. Check that, no, she was saved at the last moment by the nearly inexplicably inspired action of her mother. That same girl dies violently as a teenager. Check that, no, she turned left instead of right and thereby failed to encounter the person who might otherwise have led her show more to her death. And so on, so that this infant girl makes it through to her ninetieth birthday.

But now who is this girl, this character whose morbidity is so changeable? Is she really anyone at all? Doesn’t she just become a vehicle for the passage of time as we witness what goes on in the world she passes through. In this case, given that she is born at the outset of the 20th century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we see her pass through the first world war, the consequences of that, the second world war, the consequences of that, including the division and eventual knitting back together of Germany. Is this what Erpenbeck wants us to focus on? And if so, why does she need that suspect subjunctive conditional? Why not just write the story of that long-lived girl from the outset? Unless she mostly wants us to be always conscious that her character might very well not have been long-lived. And what do we learn from that?

However you might feel about the structural technique employed in this novel, what must be acknowledged is Erpenbeck’s mastery of her evocative language. Ever and again, tiny motifs return and reassert themselves. All without any metaphysical trappings. I found it compelling reading, despite the purposeful distancing of the arch style during the period set in Russia. Thoughtful, sensitive, intense.

Well worth reading. show less

It was a friend who recommended this novel – and while people recommend books pretty much all the time, something about this one sounded like it might appeal. So I bunged it on my Amazon wishlist, and was subsequently given it as a Christmas present. The back-cover blurb makes explicit comparisons to Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life (a book I very much liked, and, in fact, nominated for a Hugo, during my one and only attempt at nominating for the Hugo), but the novel The End of Days reminds me of the most is Katie Ward’s Girl Reading, another book unknown to me until someone recommended it… and which turned out to the best book I read that year. Plotwise, Atkinson’s novel is certainly a closer match, given that The End of Days show more describes the life of a woman born in Galicia in the latter days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and her life throughout the twentieth century as she survives WWI, joins the Communist Party in Vienna, moves to Moscow, and then Berlin, and becomes a famous East German writer. As in, that’s it in the final section in which she lives a long and eventful life. Earlier sections cut it short at various junctures. The writing throughout is stunningly good, the structure is very carefully built up, and this is one of the most impressive books I’ve read so far this year. I fully expect it to make my best five of the half-year, if not the year. I also want to read more by Erpenbeck. show less

‘’The Lord gave and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up.’’

This book is full of horrors. The horror of losing your newborn child. The horror of being a stranger, unwanted and frowned upon. The horror of oppression, persecution, war, death. The wound of a country that suddenly finds itself split in two, families separated, people labeled as ‘’second-class’’ citizens. And then, all the questions overruled by a single phrase: ‘’what if’’. What if we had the chance to show more live again? To witness death and birth and wait for the cycle to start anew? This is the background of Jenny Erpenbeck’s haunting novel in a beautiful, soulful translation by Susan Bernofsky.

In a story that spans countries and eras, our journey starts in Galicia at the end of the 19th century. A young couple of mixed religious background loses a baby girl. The pain is unbearable, the aftershock of the tragic loss comes swiftly and violently. In books connected by intermezzi, Erpenbeck takes us on a journey to Europe and its turbulent History. Our guide? The girl that died. Erpenbeck imagines how her life could have turned out if she had been given a second chance, her choices and relationships in the heart of two countries whose course in History has been stormy, to say the least. Germany and Russia.

‘’The newly arrived ship lies safely in the harbour. But nothing is known of the one just setting sail. What will be its fate? Who knows whether it will successfully withstand the storms awaiting it?’’

Erpenbeck writes and her words enter your soul and mind and haunt you for days. The essence of the story is overcoming ordeals and sometimes this is just not possible. How do you overcome the loss of a child? It is against the law of Nature, it is Hell on Earth. The paragraphs describing the mother’s pain and the superstitions related to Death are powerful and poignant. The claustrophobic feeling created by all the unnecessary do-gooders who believe they know what is right. In addition to biological death there is also another kind of loss. The need to abandon your homeland in search of a better life. The ordeal of the immigrants arriving in New York, the move to Vienna, to Prague, and Moscow, the Berliners who found themselves isolated and downgraded in the blink of an eye. There is no home for the ones who are rejected by society and the domestic environment is no less harsh or oppressive.

‘’Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.’’

Religion plays a significant role in the story. Christian and Jewish citizens fall in love with each other, people are branded because of their religious beliefs, hunted and massacred. Throughout the story, the writer poignantly demonstrates how we all share the same feelings despite the fact that we may pray differently. People of different religions and nationalities are united by the same hardships and fears. No matter how we call God, we all want one thing. Peace.
‘’Someone should declare war on war.’’

War is the bane of our existence. Erpenbeck uses ominous symbols like lightning, storms and earthquakes to refer to eras shaken by the vicious human nature. It doesn’t matter where we are. Vienna, Prague, Moscow or Berlin. Whether we are in 1920 or in 1938 when Hitler’s darkness spread over Europe, leading to the Second World War, when Stalin’s dominance in the Soviet Union became absolute. Sometimes, peace seems only an illusion in the darkest moments of History and the period following a war is even more difficult because societies are in ruins and populations are devastated.

Erpenbeck enriches the novel with various cultural and historical references. She vividly paints the various eras and places of action. The descriptions of the Viennese streets are so beautiful...Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, a favourite operetta, Oscar Wilde’s Salome, one of my favourite plays, Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, the legend of Melmoth. Rosa Luxemburg, the KGB, the daily life in the GDR, the massacre in Lviv pass before our eyes. In various writing styles (stream of consciousness, monologue, unpunctuated dialogue, non-linear narrative), Erpenbeck writes about motherhood, death, despair and hope, ending in the time of the Reunification of Germany.

Time means everything and nothing. Nothing changes and yet fundamental alterations take place in the blink of an eye. What would have happened if….The eternal unanswered question that defines History and the fate of us all. You do not want to miss this masterpiece….

‘’And what is the deepest layer one can lay back? In the end, does coming clean mean scraping the very flesh of your bones? And then, what are bones?’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com show less

I read this months ago; I enjoyed it at the time, and it's grown on me in the meantime. The conceit could be irritating, and I understand anyone who does find it so, but what Erpenbeck does with the conceit makes the novel: it's exactly the kind of thing I like, a grand reckoning with the history of the twentieth century, with its atrocities, injustices, and lower-level unfairnesses all visited on the same poor woman. That probably sounds depressing, and it is, but justifiably depressing, and at least the book is perfectly formed and beautifully written and elegantly completed, whereas the century it depicts was a vulgar, unending monstrosity that, and, if the last sixteen years are good evidence, nobody even bothered to learn anything.

I’m glad I managed to get Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days read before the end of the year because it definitely belongs on my 2014 “Best Of” list.

The End of Days is powerfully built. The structure is original; the scope is broad. If I had to say what it’s about, I’d have to give three answers:

1. It’s a sequence of five “novels,” each a life story of the same woman. With a few events changed, the course of her life expands. In the first “novel” of this novel, she dies as an infant of what is most probably Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. By the time the reader reaches the fifth and final “novel,” she’s lived a long life, become an acclaimed writer, and is living in an assisted care facility.

2. It’s a show more devastating depiction of the many waves of anti-Semitism that swept Europe during the 20th Century.

3. Finally, it’s an examination of the hopes behind and the subsequent betrayal of European socialism, beginning with anti-WWI pacifism, extending through much of the history of the Soviet Union, and ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Remarkably, The End of Days, succeeds at doing all of these without sacrificing any one of them to another.

The End of Days requires slow, careful reading. Part of this may result from the German original. I don’t know enough to say for sure, but I suspect that many of its muti-layered, multi-directional sentences are a result of the language it was originally written in. The blessing of this demanding style is that it requires one to read at a pace that allows for close attention to details.

The End of Days is the sort of novel one should read when one is ready to do some real work in reading—and to reap the rewards this work generates. None of the central character’s lives ends well, but by watching her path through each of them, we are confronted with many of the failings of the century we’ve just left behind. show less

Best for:
People interested in a deep look into just a few lives - their potential, their reality, their what-could-have-beens. People who like novels that aren’t conventional but aren’t totally out there.

In a nutshell:
Five generations of one family experience the 19th century, stopping and restarting along the way.

Worth quoting:
“She’d been able to remake her thinking from scratch, but not her family history.”

“Before striding off on a new path, must one not have acquired a profound understanding of what was wrong with the old one?”

“At many points during her life she had done something for the last time without knowing it. Did that mean that death was not a moment but a front, one that was as long as life?”

Why I chose show more it:
This was a birthday gift from my partner.

Review:
This review will contain some mild spoilers for the first part o the book.

The premise of this book is what a life might be like should certain events not have happened. I thought it might be a reset at birth each time, but no. The first section looks at the lives of the characters if the daughter (no one has names) dies around eight months. Everyone is destroyed in different ways - the father makes a decision that I find shocking and fascinated; the mother ends up completely shutting down.

In the intermission, we look at what would have happened if, when the baby wasn’t breathing, someone had done something to startle the baby back to life, and follows the family until the baby is a young woman. They all are experiencing pain due to WWI and famine, and there is now a second, younger daughter. The main daughter is traumatized and does not want to live, and, this story ends with her death at 19.

It goes on for there, with five total lives / continuations of life, following the great grandmother, grandmother, mother, daughter, and son. No one has names. No one has an easy life.

It’s an interesting idea, seeing how something going a little different might alter the course of one’s life but also the lives of everyone around one. It’s been done so many different ways, but this way feels … dark but also refreshing. It is a book that both feels totally originally and also extremely familiar.

Something that has struck me throughout the book is just the heaviness of everyone’s lives, and the fact that we don’t know what other people are going through. In this book, the grandmother of the daughter carries a secret with her that affects both her and her daughter. The daughter gathers her own secrets that impact her son. There is generational trauma, and things these family members experience that no one else in their family knows, let alone understands. There’s so much pain held inside. How many of the people we know well, or just encounter on a daily basis, are holding onto a pain we’ll never know about?

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Pass to a friend. show less