The Appointment

The unnamed narrator of this novel is taking a tram journey from her home to the office where she has been summoned - yet again - to be interviewed about her alleged crimes against the Romanian state. Along the way, she reflects on the other passengers in the tram, on her current and previous husbands, her family and in-laws, her neighbours, and the circumstances that led her to the point of making a small and rather futile gesture against the authority of the régime. Her observation of the small details of everyday life is almost brutally sharp in its focus, as the stream-of-consciousness builds up a composite picture of the way living under a corrupt authoritarian government distorts and coarsens everything in life, down to the most show more trivial level, with madness, alcohol and suicide appearing as the only viable ways out.

It's an interesting contrast with Herztier, the other of her novels that I've read: there the character was a young intellectual who was driven to write, whilst here it's a woman who strongly distrusts the written word (or anything else that leaves a record), but has nonetheless started to note down details of the physical world around her because her faith in reality is so shaken that she no longer trusts that there will be the same number of lampposts along the street from one day to the next. Magnificent, but very painful writing.

(I wonder why it is that Müller's titles so rarely survive translation to English? The plain ones become extravagant - Herztier -> The land of green plums, Atemschaukel -> The hunger angel - and the extravagant ones plain Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet -> The Appointment, Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt -> The Passport) show less

'Strange, lyrical and disturbing'
By sally tarbox on 10 Feb. 2013
Format: Kindle Edition
The unnamed narrator of this work is a young woman working in a clothing factory in Ceaucescu's Romania. From the first sentence we know that she has been 'summoned' for further interrogation on her 'crime' of smuggling out notes in the clothing consignments in the hope of getting an Italian husband and escaping. As she awaits the appointment and then as she makes the tram journey to the place of interrogation, we follow her thoughts and recollections. She thinks of her current partner, Paul; recalls her dead friend Lilli; looks at the world around her:
'The park was a sheer wall of blackish green, the sky clutching at the trees.'
Without Ms Muller show more giving us too much explicit detail about what went on, she manages to create an immensely chilling book. The constantly watching other people, wondering if they are spies... The way that false crimes could be attributed to you by anyone you upset...An entire society, many members of whom are paying lip service to a regime they don't support, through fear and hope of 'moving up the ladder' if they comply:
'First he was a fascist; later he said he'd been in the Communist underground...Anyone poor became a Communist. So did many rich people who didn't want to end up in a camp. Now my father's dead and if there's a heaven up there, you can be sure he's claiming to be a Christian.'
Absolutely rivetting book which I would say needs a second read to help you pick up on all the symbols and motifs that pepper the pages. show less

Like all Muller’s books, this is grim but well worth reading. A woman in Ceaucescu's Romania is summoned, not for the first time, to a meeting with a secret policeman. The whole novel takes place in her head as she travels to the appointment on the tram. Her previous husband and family history, her current husband's descent into alcoholism, the death of her friends and the madness of so many people around her are all gradually brought into focus. The great strength of the book is that it makes her appointment seem not to be the worst of life in that place - the society she lives in is so poisoned that almost everybody is suffering just as badly as she is, albeit in different ways. It's not one I rushed to pick up again, but as an show more effective portrait of a time and place, it's hard to beat. I wish my German was up to reading the original. show less

A conversation on Twitter late one night after I had imbibed a portion or two of wine turned to laureates of the Nobel Prize for Literature (writers, not fucking folk singers), and female laureates in particular, and, well, before I knew it, I’d gone and bought a couple books by female Nobel laureates on the web site of a very large online retailer. The first was this, The Appointment by Herta Müller, a German writer who, despite her name is, er, actually Romanian. Her family belonged to the German-speaking minority in Romania, but in 1987 she was given permission to leave and settle in Germany after many years of trying. Her most successful novel to date has been 2009’s The Hunger Angel, and that same year she was awarded the show more Nobel Prize for Literature. Until prompted to look her up by the aforementioned Twitter conversation, I had not even heard of Müller or her fiction. But I bought The Appointment, and read it on a trip to, and from, Leeds one Saturday. The Appointment was published in Germany – she is, despite her origin, probably best considered a German writer – but the novel is set in Romania, as indeed is apparently much of her fiction. The title refers to the meeting the narrator has with Albu, a major in the Romanian secret police. The narrator used to work in a garment factory, whose products were mostly destined for export – and in a shipment of trousers destined for Italy, she hid a series of notes, asking to be rescued, through marriage, by an Italian man. But the notes were found and she was reported to management. Unfortunately, she had a bad relationship with her manager, and when a later series of notes were found, critical of the regime, she was blamed and sacked. And forced to attend interrogation sessions with Major Albu. It’s grim stuff. I’ve visited Romania – it’s a lovely country, full of lovely people – but the Ceaucescu regime was brutal and Müller pulls no punches in depicting how it impacted the lives of ordinary people. I’m in two minds whether to read more Müller – she writes in a style I like, present tense and slightly distant, and while I’m not especially keen on first-person narratives it works extremely well here; but the story is punishingly hard to read. Having said that, writing about the book for this blog post is sort of persuading me to try something else by her… show less

The Appointment is a stream of consciousness novel. My experience of such novels has not been good, but I'm glad to say Herta Muller's novel was fascinating and well paced.

It is the thoughts of a woman on her way to an interrogation. The novel opens with the words, "I've been summonsed." There is no thought of not turning up. She lives in a totalitarian state and the consequences are not worth thinking about.

Muller conveys the sense of paranoia very well. The individual is a victim of the state and the state watches and punishes those it perceives as having insulted the state or put their personal interests above that of the greater good.

The protagonists mind wanders over several topics and across different time spans to give the reader show more the background to her "summons", and also lays out the history of her two marriages, the love life of her closest friend, the attitudes of the general populace, etc...

I found this book not only portrayed the pressures on the individual who is subjected to the revenge of the system, but also what life in a totalitarian state is like, especially under the watchful eyes of the security officials.

A sobering yet intriguing book. show less

As my faithful readers know, I always read the major prize-winners when announced. As is the case with most recent Nobel Prize awardees, I had never heard of Herta Müller. At first I thought, well yes, Eastern Europe before the collapse of the Soviet Union – secret police, long lines and empty shelves, spying neighbors, frequent and seemingly pointless interrogations to root out dissatisfied citizens – I had heard, seen, and read this plot many times.

The difference with Müller’s take on this story involves, lyrical, graceful, simple prose that lulls the reader into a false sense of “been-there, done-that.” I nearly gave up several times and even had to struggle to get through the last 40 pages as the descriptions became show more more detailed, more bizarre, and the mind of the un-named narrator becomes more and more disjointed. Then I read the last line: “The trick is not to go mad.”

So, like Kafka, and Lu Hsun’s “Diary of a Madman,” Müller’s novel relates the descent into madness as a result of paranoia of a dictatorship run wild with maintaining absolute power and control over its citizens. How close we came to that precipice! The novel is a warning. Unbridled police powers will inevitably lead to abuse and oppression.

With that last line – almost a Joycean epiphany – the novel made sense. It became harrowing, exasperating, and I understood completely how madness did result. 5 stars.

--Jim, 12/31/09 show less

Everything happened in a twinkling, the time it takes for one person to assault another.

Müller's Nobel Prize speech is transcribed at the end of this edition, a bonus the cover did not hint at that other editions could learn from, and among other thought provoking paragraphs was her probing the susceptibility of engineers and the like to making homunculi out of their creations. I already knew a number of beautiful words having to do with lubricated hydraulic machine parts: DOVETAIL, GOOSENECK, ACORN NUTS, and EYEBOLTS, she says, and so I left off characterizing her plot structure as the shuttering swift sidings of looms and thought of maelstroms instead. Capturing the linear side of things is all very well, but we are no Arachne in our show more weaving and wiggling our way out of the unyielding desire of the eye.

You feel fine because you’ve forgotten what that means for other people.

The Wiki page for the author already rhapsodized on about Kafka, so I'll save us both some ethos and think instead on past and future. If you let it, the narrative will explain all that needs be expounded, letting even a novice in Romanian tinged literature such as myself into its endless bowels. When the final page is turned, you'll have the comfort of your narrator's closure, for you'll know exactly how she came to be here and where she has utmost need to go. Whether you accept the lines drawn by death and madness by that point is another matter entirely.

On the way I thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could be up in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbidding people to look at it.

The matter of her being a woman may be a turnoff to some, for the cruelty aimed so casually and frequently at female bodies is the same regardless of political leanings, souring those feel good leavings that horror stories of Communism inevitably leave on the democratically inclined. It's not nearly as difficult as Morrison and Jelinek, but it is said, and unlike the others dwells on many a tale of daughters fucking fathers (note the order and implicated position) and other sundry tales of female lust, so maybe there is something to be said about that Communism business in conjunction with the patriarchy. Or not, but whether 'twas meaning or null, it was worth noting, for superstitious warding off harm before the next appointment share with a sought out sex an ultimate need for control.

First look left and then look right, son, to see if a car's coming. That's important when you're crossing a street but it's a dangerous way to think.

Hell hath no fury like a man offended. show less