A Minute's Silence

It's a tragedy: Stella Petersen, a young woman, an English teacher at a high school in northern Germany, has died. The school holds a memorial service, and one by one they step up to give their eulogies: the principal, other teachers, a representative of the students.

In the audience sits Christian, one of the students. He was asked to say a few words, but while the others speak for all but one minute, he's quiet. He sits there remembering the summer, their summer, in the small seaside town with beach parties (this is the late 50s, after all), regattas, and clandestine meetings. It's a short service, so it's a short novel; in just over 100 pages, and in quick flashbacks, we get to follow Christian's and Stella's hesitant, very show more inappropriate, and ultimately (as we know) doomed relationship.

So, yet another novel by an aging writer reminiscing about first discovering the physical act of love, eh? Well sure, if you want to get technical, but it's a lot more than that. Though on the one hand, this is really that simple: a story about falling in love for the first time, back when everything is still life and death, everything or nothing, when you still think love is all that matters and your feelings are automatically returned. Lenz's style is wonderfully and deceptively light, letting Christian the narrator set the whole thing in such simple tones (teenagers love hard, but they're not always noted for their empathy) that we almost, but only almost, don't notice the obvious: that Stella is an adult, with a couple more years on him, and a complicated life full of issues and relationships that Christian has no part of. Christian certainly doesn't notice; he's too busy making plans of a little lighthousekeeper's house for two.

That difference in storylines, that confusion of subject and object run throughout the novel. Christian, in love with (the idea of being in love with) a person who's supposed to be an authority figure, dreaming of being her Man, struggles to be consistent in how he addresses and thinks of her; shifting between du and Sie when talking to her and between you and she when describing her to himself. It's as if he's trying to deliver a eulogy to her, yet ends up telling himself their story instead, fixing it in his memory as he wants to remember it, encasing her in amber. And throughout the novel, rock by rock, a breakwater is built outside the little town to keep the big waves from ruining the nostalgic calm.

There's a tone in A Minute's Silence that reminds me of the paintings of the Skagen painters; the wide open sky, the false nostalgia of easy life in a place where most people have to work hard for everything, the hazy North Sea light. At other times it reminds me of Isherwood's A Single Man; not just the way it's set in a single day but dealing in memories and their role in how we see (or fail to see) ourselves and relate to others, or coping with the death of a loved one, or even the way the discussion of a different book (Orwell's Animal Farm; Christian misses the point of it entirely) plays an important part in the narrative. But also the way the author manages to charge every word of his simple story and featherlight prose with meaning. If you wanted to, you could pick every paragraph apart hunting for symbolism and find it - yet that's never necessary. That's just all the little shades of blue that make up the whole picture, give it depth. Mostly, though, A Minute's Silence is just itself: a simple but haunting story about a young man, a slightly older woman, and how we become... well, slightly older. A eulogy for getting it both right and wrong. show less

Welch ein anrührendes Buch! Siegfried Lenz erzählt die Geschichte einer längst vergangenen Liebe: Als Gymnasiast verliebt sich Christian in seine Englischlehrerin Stella und sie werden ein Liebespaar. Doch diese Verbindung währt nur kurz: Bei einem Schiffsunglück wird Stella so schwer verletzt, dass sie kurz darauf stirbt. Erzählt wird diese Liebe von dem mittlerweile älteren, erfahrenen Christian, der sich an díe Gedenkveranstaltung (und die damit verbundene Schweigeminute, daher der Titel) erinnert und daran, wie er währenddessen die gemeinsame Zeit noch einmal durchlebte. Diese Perspektive ist gut gewählt: Die Wortwahl, die sorgsam ausgewählten Sätze hätten für einen 18-Jährigen nicht glaubhaft gewirkt.
Das ganze Buch show more ist von einem wunderbar liebevollen, zärtlichen Ton geprägt. Man spürt noch immer die Gefühle, die Christian seiner Lehrerin entgegenbrachte, aber auch die Trauer über das abrupte Ende ihrer Beziehung und all der eventuell verpassten Möglichkeiten einer gemeinsamen Zeit. Mir standen mehr als einmal die Tränen in den Augen.
SEHR ZU EMPFEHLEN!!! show less

I happened upon this tiny novella at a charity used book sale and wow, what a find! I curled up with it one lazy, Sunday afternoon in front of the fire and it completely swept me away. This is an absolutely beautiful, tender, sad and wise love story in the vein of those that simply cannot really exist in the world, but do anyway, for a short period of time. That is not a spoiler, it's on the cover and on the first page. Set on the unique locale of the Baltic coast of Germany, amongst the fisherman, sea trades, boats and villagers of Hirstshafen, eighteen year old high schooler Christian (a "stone fisherman") quickly falls under the spell of his pretty English teacher, Stella. That is a simple premise, but what made this book really show more shine is how much not only Christian and Stella cared for each other, but the interaction among the villagers, teachers, students and parents. There is one of my favorite scenes in memory, where Christian and Stella are learning of their attraction towards each other at the yearly town dance/party (complete with a seaweed adorned Trident), but Christian's little neighbor girl, Sonja (who has a mighty crush on Christian) wants to dance and be the center of his affection. How kindly and gently they treat Sonja, and how her "little girl" dancing, romantic spirit is captured, was just so real and beautiful. So while being a love story at its core, it is also a reflection of one small sea town, its people, the nature that shapes it and an unusual affair that arises in their midst. Highly recommended. show less

Enchanting late novella from a writer who doesn't need to prove himself any more. Lenz goes back to the teenage narrators of Deutschstunde and Heimatmuseum for this rather sentimental summertime love story, very effectively. Slightly oddly, it seems to be set in the seventies, neither in the author's youth nor in the present day. Presumably we are supposed to see the author in the old teacher who pops up in the last few pages.

Forget Prince Albert, Stella is littered with English traces. There are whiffs of [b:The End of the Affair|29641|The End of the Affair|Graham Greene|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328010344s/29641.jpg|267229] and [b:The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie|517188|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie |Muriel Spark|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1307465236s/517188.jpg|6132856]. I'd like to conclude that Herr Lenz made this as an homage to his friend W.G. Sebald, another German steeped in English traditions. The plot is rather linear and self-evident. A teacher of English at a coastal German school has died. One of her students grieves and recalls their relationship, one more intimate than one would guess. The paragraphs are dynamic, switching from 1st person show more to second or third seamlessly.

The student, Christian, lacks the wisdom to engage this chain of events. It is his innocence which gives the reader traction. Most of the narrative occurs at sea. Lenz shines in these sequences. Whereas his youthful character slips along with platitudes, the elements murmur eternally. show less

I did not enjoy A Minute's Silence (ger: Schweigeminute) as much as I had anticipated. The main reason seems to be that the story is more realistic, rather than romantic.

The novella describes the love of a high school student, Christian, for his English teacher, Stella. But the story is told retrospectively, in the form of flash-backs, while Christian attends the memorial service for Stella, who has died in an accident. The story is not very romantic; Stella's interest in Christian, which seems insincere, does not meet Christian's youthful adoration. She plays with him.

The coldness is further created by the interrupting effect of flash-backs and attendance of the memorial service, and the accident and subsequent hospital scene. Other show more distracting or detracting parts of the plot are scenes at school and multiple references to George Orwell's Animal farm, a book which is read in Stella's class. It is a bit difficult to see how this relates to the story, but with some stretching it could be suggested that it emphases the inequality between Christian and Stella: some animals are more equal than other animals.

I had the feeling there were too many characters in the book, and too many scenes. show less

Mooie novelle over een onmogelijke liefde. Het thema is niet nieuw: scholier wordt verliefd op mooie lerares, en het is van bij het begin duidelijk - voor de lezer althans - dat de relatie geen toekomst heeft.
Maar het is allemaal mooi en ingehouden beschreven. Toch wel de moeite waard.