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The Post-Office Girl

by Stefan Zweig

4.01 · rating details · 388 ratings · 86 reviews

The post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a...more

Paperback, 257 pages

Published April 15th 2008 by NYRB Classics (first published 1982)

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Jan 17, 2012

Anne rated it

Shelves: nyrb, austria, fiction, noir, fifty-two-countries, read-2012

The Post Office Girl is a story about a poor, young postal worker, Christine, who gets the chance of a lifetime to have a very brief, but wonderfully transforming vacation from her poverty-stricken life. She is allowed to taste luxury and all that money can buy in a world of wealth and happiness she has never known. This story takes place in Austria after WW1 and is an indictment against Austrian society, or society in general, and the way it allowed the soldiers of WW1 and their fami...more

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Jun 21, 2009

Heather rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

This was a beautifully written and translated book which I raced through as quickly as the protagonist's experience - possibly deliberate on Stefan Zweig's part? Zweig and Joseph Roth were close friends, so I could not help but view this book as a sort of sequel to The Radetzky March. And how much has changed in the short years since the fall of the Trottas and the Hapsburgs with them. Where Roth's Austria was all uniform and stiff upper lip, Zweig's Austria is bursting at the seams with angu...moreThis was a beautifully written and translated book which I raced through as quickly as the protagonist's experience - possibly deliberate on Stefan Zweig's part? Zweig and Joseph Roth were close friends, so I could not help but view this book as a sort of sequel to The Radetzky March. And how much has changed in the short years since the fall of the Trottas and the Hapsburgs with them. Where Roth's Austria was all uniform and stiff upper lip, Zweig's Austria is bursting at the seams with anguish and emotion.

Although the book was written and takes place in the 1920s, its background of a bloated, self-serving state apparatus pretending to stand for the people but protecting only itself, while causing a stunning gulf between wealth and poverty which the protagonist finds herself on both sides of, is quite relevant to today. Ferdinand's monologue about the state and banks working hand-in-glove could have been written in Britain last week, not in exile eighty years ago.

As for the novel's protagonist, Christine, parts of this story were surrealy autobiographical to my life. (I went out with a chap who came from "good stock" and concerned himself with being seen in high social circles; so I know what it's like to take a break from an office desk job to have polite talk in an evening gown at the opera in Paris, and in the blink of an eye, to go from that to merely existing in a cockroach-infested studio flat with an empty kitchen. Much like the novel.) For that reason I could relate to every one of her experiences and emotions up unto a point, wherever they took place. It makes me wonder how many Christines are out there now, and how many Ferdinands, and what will become of them; and knowing what lay ahead for these Austrians in the 1940s, the question becomes a little bleak. As William Deresiewicz correctly notes in the novel's afterword, people like Ferdinand were the first to don brown shirts.

Oh and - it's got a quote of approval on the cover from Neil Tennant. There you go.(less)

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Jan 05, 2009

Patrick Tobin rated it

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Dec 06, 2008

James rated it

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Aug 01, 2011

Cameling rated it

Would it really be a kindness to take a person living their entire life thus far in dull poverty and transport them for 8 days into the very lap of capitalistic luxury, in full knowledge that at the end of the vacation, they would be returned to their previous life?

Christine was one such person, living in post-war Austria with her ailing mother, knowing nothing but poverty and a dreary job in her little town's post office. Her wealthy American aunt, having a sudden attack of conscience...moreWould it really be a kindness to take a person living their entire life thus far in dull poverty and transport them for 8 days into the very lap of capitalistic luxury, in full knowledge that at the end of the vacation, they would be returned to their previous life?

Christine was one such person, living in post-war Austria with her ailing mother, knowing nothing but poverty and a dreary job in her little town's post office. Her wealthy American aunt, having a sudden attack of conscience, decides to invite her to spend 2 weeks with her in Switzerland. Our mousey unassuming Christine is almost paralyzed with fear when she arrives, believing herself to be unworthy of such luxury, and embarrassed by her old and unfashionable clothes and suitcase. But after an afternoon of shopping with her aunt for new clothes and shoes, and a stylish haircut, Christine emerges like a new butterfly. Unused to being surrounded by beauty, luxury, and elegant society, she flits about and her innocent delight with everyone and everything she sees sets a glow about her, enchanting and alluring. Our shy post office girl relishes her new found confidence and spirited joy.

But without warning, her aunt brusquely sends her back home, back to her old job, back to her joyless life. Her mother passes away while she's on her way back. To Christine, life could not be more bleak in comparison to the careless frivolity she enjoyed just a short while ago. She's no longer kind nor generous with her time to her neighbors and those who come to the post office. She wears her bitterness like a thick coat around herself, impenetrable and puzzling to all who had known her.

She visits her sister's family in Vienna, and meets Ferdinand, a veteran of the war, and an equally bitter soul. Bitter because he's been discarded by society and the government like an old odd sock since his return from Siberia. The 2 of them form an awkward relationship. It's not one that either finds particularly joyful but it's one they cling to because they understand each other's bitterness. Their increasing anger and disappointments takes them to a turning point in their lives.

This is an absorbing work and one that is masterfully crafted. It's also one that lingers in the reader's mind after the last page has been turned.(less)

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Mar 24, 2010

Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it

This is a novel for today, an odd thing to say, considering it was written almost seventy years ago. It's a tragic version of the Cinderella story, a version with no glass slipper and no Prince Charming; it's a story of a girl taken to the heights only to be plunged back into the depths.

The author, Stephan Zweig, though not that well known in the English-speaking world, is probably the best late representative of the culture of old Vienna, that urbane, tolerant, sophisticated and br...moreThis is a novel for today, an odd thing to say, considering it was written almost seventy years ago. It's a tragic version of the Cinderella story, a version with no glass slipper and no Prince Charming; it's a story of a girl taken to the heights only to be plunged back into the depths.

The author, Stephan Zweig, though not that well known in the English-speaking world, is probably the best late representative of the culture of old Vienna, that urbane, tolerant, sophisticated and brilliant world, swept away forever by the rise of the Nazis.

His oeuvre covered such a wide area of intellectual life: he was a biographer, playwright, journalist, short story writer and novelist. After Hitler came to power Zweig left his native Austria, taking refuge in England, America and finally in Brazil, where he and his second wife committed suicide in 1942 in a mood of despair over a possible German victory in the War. The manuscript of his second novel was found among his papers. Remarkably it was to be forty years after his death it was published in Germany for the first time, under the title Rausch der Verwandlung-The Intoxication of Transformation. In 2008 it was translated and published in English as The Post Office Girl.

Written in a simple, fast-paced and intoxication style, it tells the story of Christine Hoflehner, a woman in her late twenties who manages a small provincial post office in Austria, a country only just emerging from the trauma of the First World War and the economic and social dislocation that followed.

The action begins in 1926, when Christine is twenty-eight years old and living with her elderly mother, whose health has been ruined by her past experiences. The Hoflehners, once a prosperous and middle-class family, have, like so many others of the time, been brought close to ruin by the war and its after-effects. Christine, a poorly paid civil servant, recognises that life is passing her by; that her horizons are always likely to be confining and confined. Even so, there is a kind of resigned acceptance in this destiny. But then a telegram arrives from Clara, her rich American aunt, holidaying with her husband in Switzerland.

As if a fairy-godmother had appeared, Christine is lifted out of the tedium and poverty into a brilliant world, a world full of rich and glamorous people. Dowdy and badly dressed when she arrived at the luxury Swiss hotel where her relatives are staying, she is transformed in dress and appearance by her aunt. Hesitant at first, Christine is drawn into the delights of her surroundings. All at once everything is possible. Losing all inhibition, Christine enjoys the company of new friends, of men who find her beautiful and beguiling, of people whose life and experiences have been so different to her own. She learns to forget. But then the dream ends, abruptly and cruelly. It's midnight; the clock is striking. Discarded by her aunt, she is thrown back into her old world.

It's at this point that the full tragedy of Christine's story is realised. What was tolerable before is now intolerable. Before there was nothing that stood in contrast to the tedium of her daily life; now there is. A gate was opened briefly, only to close forever. New forms of bitterness and despair set in only relieved, to a degree, when she meets Ferdinand, even bitterer than Christine. What follows is a love affair of a kind, limping and unsatisfactory, of two people bound by a mutual sense of rejection.

This is a fairy tale with no happy ending. In fact it might be said to have no ending at all. Remember it's an unfinished book, and the last few pages read almost as if the author is outlining possible future developments. To that degree the conclusion, such as it is, might even said to be abrupt. But there again, this might conceivably have been what Zweig wanted. After all, life is abrupt. No matter; it's one of those books that make a lasting impression, one that will stay with me for a long time to come.
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Jun 06, 2010

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it

‘Names have a mysterious transforming power.’

This novel tells the story of Christine Hoflehner, a post office clerk, in a small village outside Vienna some years after World War One. Here Christine exists, sharing a dank attic with her ill mother. The war has stolen her father, her brother and her capacity to laugh. The war may have ended, but poverty has not: ‘Now it's creeping back out, hollow-eyed, broad-muzzled, hungry and bold, and eating what's left in the gutters of the war....more

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Jan 17, 2012

Asmah rated it

Shelves: 52-2012, austria, nyrb

Author examined the 1920s Austrian conditions and mentality. The characters, Christine and Ferdinand, are at an impasse in their youthful lives. Both (twenty-eight to thirty years old) remember better, hopeful times of earned prosperity and landed security, but that was innocently lost through a force external to them (WWI and its conditions afterward) through no fault of their own and is without recourse to reclaim it. While Christine has meager but steady employment in a village post office th...more

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Jan 21, 2012

Nicholas During rated it

I feel a bit mixed about this book. I know that Zweig doesn't lack critics, I've haven't yet read the Michael Hofmann take down but I will soon, and at first I was prepared to disagree with them here. I thought then that the book was an interesting look at the interwar period from a voice perhaps closer to the public that the more experimental, bohemian, elite works coming after WWI. At the same time the depiction of the despair the war, and fate, caused for Christine was very powerful. This is ...moreI feel a bit mixed about this book. I know that Zweig doesn't lack critics, I've haven't yet read the Michael Hofmann take down but I will soon, and at first I was prepared to disagree with them here. I thought then that the book was an interesting look at the interwar period from a voice perhaps closer to the public that the more experimental, bohemian, elite works coming after WWI. At the same time the depiction of the despair the war, and fate, caused for Christine was very powerful. This is not a crippled vet, but a young woman one might have thought escaped the war relatively unscathed. But Zweig shows her to be a victim on a similar plan to any soldier, and the sense of injustice is perhaps stronger because of her ostensible inaction in the war. And then I thought the scenes in the hotel, and Christine's discovery of the 'Good Life' was also strong. Could this almost be a Marxist novel? And not just that, but one with out a warring hero, but a nice young girl who simply is excited to enjoy the pleasures that come with money. This is definitely a "woman's book" (I'm thinking of the precursor to chick lit and possibly the genre that creates the modern novel).By also showing the hypocrisy of the rich, and their meanness, I thought this section seemed political important; here is a book, not toting any party or aesthetic line, but trying to entertain the reading masses while exposing injustice and hypocrisy in their world. I also thought her transformation and Christine's changing identity was very good.

I did find the second part faltered however. Now the book became more preachy. Longer speeches about the detrimental effect of the war that has been covered in other books in much better way. While Christine seemed an original characters as she wasn't really a 'victim' in the war, the character of Ferdinand fell a bit flat. And it was in the second part where the melodrama seemed to take over. No small feelings for these characters, every emotions is strong and polar. And that, I think, is not great writing, and my interest began to flag. Anyway I'm glad I read this book, and think it is important historical work in an important time for literature. It's imperfect, but still contains the kernels of some very interesting ideas.(less)

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Mar 18, 2009

Automedusa rated it

Once I let go of the shame of letting go of unfinished books and once I let go of the adolescent snobism in my choice of reading, I've been exploring more and more. I go with my gut, I pick a book (and will continue to do so, while they exist) look at the back flap and if it interests me, regardless of the genre, nationality, style, popularity and whatnot, I'll take it. This one was one of those books. A friend had already recommended Stefan Zweig but when I chose this book I didn't recall the a...more

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Nov 22, 2009

Annie rated it

· review of another edition

This was a most unusual book and a story that'll really stay with me. The Austrian author was a Jewish pacifist who fled to New York + Brazil with the rise of the Nazis, and committed suicide in a pact with his wife: the manuscript was found after his death. This is a story of a young girl who's had life knocked out of her while living in crushing poverty, and who exists through working in a small post office. Her excursion to Switzerland is wonderful - shallow but dazzling people, beautifully...more

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Mar 21, 2011

Eileen rated it

So I took this on the train to SF this weekend, thinking I'd better bring a book I hadn't even started or else I'd be stuck having finished reading by about halfway home later that night. Flash forward to halfway home: book finished; nothing else to read. Next time take something longer than 250 pages, self.

Quick notes, since it's time for real work:
- Very well done in general. Quick to read, but not light in any way.
- Pacing exceptional.
- Tone very well done; in tu...more

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Aug 10, 2010

Tsehay rated it

Shelves: classics

Well, not only does it capture the heart of capitalism but Zweig truly is a master at analyzing the depth of human nature. Perhaps too heavy on the detailed descriptions but easy to get swept up in the story. There were so many elements of human passion...the rich aunt with her facade and secrets, the tendency of human repression in favor of idealism, hope and bitterness, false superiority as a coping mechanism and also circumstantial pain and devastation. The back flap says this story is Cinder...more

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Dec 09, 2010

Brad rated it

Shelves: depressing-but-awesome

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 31, 2012

Declan rated it

I liked this book a lot. It has many excellent qualities and it's themes and implications resonate as strongly now as when it was written. We live in a time when people are suddenly elevated to the vapid realms of celebrity because they have appeared on a particular television programme; had a liaison with a President or marry someone wealthy. The newspapers which feel they have delivered fame to these people always follow the trajectory of an arc. The adoration reaches a peak and then, with ru...more

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Jul 19, 2011

Lisa Ard rated it

An extremely well-written account of Christine, a young woman living in poverty in Austria following WWI. The interesting part of this read is that she doesn't consider her circumstances until she is exposed to a world of wealth through her rich American aunt and uncle. She succumbs to a life of frivolity, only to have it ripped away. And then she can never be happy again. Her despair leads her to another soul, equally diminished by his circumstances. Is it friendship? Is it love? Or more likely...more

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May 24, 2010

Chris rated it

A very well-crafted book that resembles Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London in its depiction of post-WWI poverty and the despair and disappointment with follows from poverty, but set in Austria and originally written in German. The Author, Zweig, is less well known in the Anglo world, and they NYRB series is meant to bring him to a wider audience. I can see the merit in this. Very human, with believable characterizations of the main protagonists, the minor characters, and deftly described ...more

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Aug 21, 2009

James Axtell rated it

· review of another edition

Vivid descriptions of the tedious and difficult world of a young girl brought old before her time by circumstance. My late 20C (Western) upbringing ignorant of war and its effects was challenged through the eyes of someone seeing experience and opportunity for the first time in her late 20s.
The age old question of "is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all" applied to an experience of what the other half have was starkly clear throughout.
Our book ...more

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Aug 12, 2009

Karon rated it

I have only just started this book about 100 or so pages in (thats why ive only given it 3stars so far) I purchased this novel as I was taking a trip to Salzburg,Austria & had read a review about this famous austrian author who committed sucide in the 40's-driven out of his native land by Nazis. The novel is a re-telling of the cinderella story (slightly more depressing) about a young austrian woman trapped in a life of poverty after the first world war. I fell in love with Austrian as a country...more

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Apr 19, 2010

Kristy rated it

I really liked this. There were places where it seemed to be veering into cliche but always at the last minute it was surprising. I love that you don't know what actually happens at the end. He does an excellent job of making you feel the grinding depression of poverty. And the relationship between Christine and Ferdinand was interesting. She is such a dependent character but his influence seemed to be leading her more toward independence and agency. It's irritating that she would need to find t...more

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Jun 02, 2010

Erin rated it

Shelves: favorites, 2010-reading-list

I started and finished The Post Office Girl in one day. I just couldn't put it down. It's a story that pulls you in at once and never lets go.

It was written in the 1930s by one of Vienna's most famous authors at the time, Stefan Zweig. Shortly after writing the book, he was forced by the Nazis to flee Europe. He died a few years later in 1942 while living in South America.

A short synopsis of the story (NOT a spoiler...)

The story is about a 28 year old woman n...moreI started and finished The Post Office Girl in one day. I just couldn't put it down. It's a story that pulls you in at once and never lets go.

It was written in the 1930s by one of Vienna's most famous authors at the time, Stefan Zweig. Shortly after writing the book, he was forced by the Nazis to flee Europe. He died a few years later in 1942 while living in South America.

A short synopsis of the story (NOT a spoiler...)

The story is about a 28 year old woman named Christine, who lives in a small, secluded Austrian village with her bed-ridden mother and works as a poorly paid post office clerk in a tiny run-down office. Life is a struggle for survival in this period after WWI. She is a young woman who has lost a brother, a father and her youth in the aftermath of the war. She expects nothing but hard work and exhaustion day in and day out, and receives nothing but those things for years on end. Her life is predictable and never-changing. In a way, Christine's a shell of a woman--with little feeling or emotion for what it is to be alive. She goes through the motions of living each day, with no expectations.

Then, one day a surprise telegram appears at her little post-office from a wealthy aunt, her mother's long-lost American sister, inviting her to Switzerland to join her and her husband in a posh resort hotel for a 2 week vacation. With mixed feelings, she travels by train to the Swiss mountains. Over the course of a week, her life as she knew it changes forever. She sees what she's been missing in her empty, poverty-stricken existence back in Austria. She gets a taste of wealth and the incredible feeling of freedom which accompanies it. When she's suddenly forced to return home a week early to her miserable life in Austria and her small, isolated post-office, she returns to a completely different world than the one she left. Nothing equals the experience she has had in Switzerland. None of the people she once cared for mean anything to her. She cannot accept this old life of hers anymore.

Christine has changed and her world will never be the same.

It's a beautifully written story--and an absolute classic--deserving to be widely read. I found myself completely engaged from beginning to end and amazed at the gorgeous, descriptive narrative. It made some of my most recent reads pale in comparison. Stefan Zweig is a gifted story-teller. He is a new favorite of mine.

The Post Office Girl wasn't published in Germany until 1982 (later translated into English in 2002.) It had been found as an unfinished manuscript among Stefan Zweig's belongings after his death.

I can't recommend it enough.

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Dec 13, 2008

Quinn rated it

The book is split in two, into the two social hemispheres of Middle Europe between its symmetrical wars, between the frantic, oxygen-drunk hedonism of the Alpine resort towns and their nouveau and vieux riche pursuants of the decade-long orgasm, and the low world of the city, hyperinflated, deflated and now depressed, where emasculation is so patent that torn tendons in the hands of male characters leave their fingers limp. Christine, the post-office girl of the title, is the hapless Alice thro...more

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Dec 05, 2009

John Marr rated it

A humble postal worker in post-War (WWI, that is) Austria gets invited by high flying aunt for a vacation at a high flying resort and quickly succumbs to the life. The sudden return to her real life leaves her emibittered and this humble reader bored. Yet for some reason I preservered until she meets an even more emibittered and down-trodden vet. Their "love" affiar is a dirty (as in unsanitary)and depressing look at life among the destitute that kept me going to the end.

No...more

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Jan 13, 2011

Mikki rated it

Shelves: fiction, nyrb, lit-europe

" ...But it might be better not to know you're so poor, so disgustingly poor and wretched." -- Christine

This story, which takes place in Austria following World War One, centers around Christine (a lowly post office worker) and the internal psychological warfare she battles over the widened gaps between the social classes and economic equality. At 28, she lives a dreary, poverty-stricken existence dividing her time between work and caring for an ailing ...more

" ...But it might be better not to know you're so poor, so disgustingly poor and wretched." -- Christine

This story, which takes place in Austria following World War One, centers around Christine (a lowly post office worker) and the internal psychological warfare she battles over the widened gaps between the social classes and economic equality. At 28, she lives a dreary, poverty-stricken existence dividing her time between work and caring for an ailing mother in their shared one room dwelling. Resigned to this robotic life, she no longer dreams of what was -- before the war, before the rationing of food, clothing and before the loss of both her father and brother. She has relinquished all hope of regaining the lighthearted youth stripped from her at sixteen and can barely summon up memories of those early years. Defeated and accepting of her fate she lacks all expectation that things will change.

Yet change they do in the way of a telegram sent from her estranged Aunt. After fleeing Austria before the war, marrying into wealth and cutting off all ties with family, the Aunt wants to make amends with Christine's mother and in doing so, extends an invitation to vacation at an alpine resort in Switzerland. However, due to poor health, Christine's mother cannot travel and instead sends Christine in her place. She goes and the story then takes on an element of Cinderella.

Christine, now completely made over, has slowly shed the mousy, provincial shell of past and has emerged as the "it" girl of the swanky, social crowd. She has it all -- luxurious surroundings and all the trappings that money brings. But all is not what it seems at the hotel and just as in Cinderella, the clock abruptly strikes twelve leaving Christine once again an outcast, emotionally abandoned by her Aunt and left with no alternative but to return to her village. But how can she go back? How is it possible to undo all that she has seen, done, become?

Unable and unwilling to squeeze back into her confined past, she seeks refuge in a stranger of similar situation and together they try in vain to keep one another afloat as they rapidly sink lower and lower. Vowing that abject poverty will not be their future, they devise plans of desperate means. Each more costly than the next.

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Jan 23, 2011

Capitu rated it

Shelves: 2011, nyrb

We cannot rewind self-awareness! Once we have that glimpse of ourselves, deleting is not an option. But, is oblivion bliss? Are the self-ignorant happier?

Zweig doesn’t try to answer this question explicitly, his focus remains in the protagonist, Christine, and her late coming of age self-discovery and her sudden awareness of the limited life she leads on post WWI Austria.

What happens if after the ball, Cinderella returns to the cinders, rejected by the prince? What...moreWe cannot rewind self-awareness! Once we have that glimpse of ourselves, deleting is not an option. But, is oblivion bliss? Are the self-ignorant happier?

Zweig doesn’t try to answer this question explicitly, his focus remains in the protagonist, Christine, and her late coming of age self-discovery and her sudden awareness of the limited life she leads on post WWI Austria.

What happens if after the ball, Cinderella returns to the cinders, rejected by the prince? What happens when war robs our youth, and post war society remains drowned in poverty? What happens when economic poverty translates into intellectual and emotional poverty?

What would I do if like Christine and her – justly so - disgruntled boy-friend, the prospects in front of me were so bleak? Would I contemplate suicide, like they do? Or would I contemplate robbery, as they also do? Would either ever be justifiable, though?

Corruption is a theme that consumes me. Brazil, my birth country is ripe with corruption, and it sadden and irate me in the same proportion. Most Brazilians feel justified in robbing the state, from the highest paid politician to the small clerk taking a miniscule bribe for whatever reason. But maybe my comparison is unfair. In Christine’s case it is not a matter of corruption, but of life or death – existentialism in its most radical form. I don’t know. I am unsure of the ethics of it. Unsure if I have a right to judge. Those are fictional characters, but – in a very surreal correspondence - they do mirror the life story of the author, who at the end did chose suicide.

I should just be grateful that my own life was not wrecked by war and poverty. I should also realize that if totalitarian governments are not ruling Europe any longer, war and totalitarianism still rages in third world countries. Poverty abounds bellow the Equator. How many Christines are there in Haiti, Sudan, or Brazil?

Back to the book, it won the Pen Best Translation of the year sometime ( I am too lazy to find out when). The prose does sound effortless, and very contemporary. The end is too abrupt though, and I am struggling with the idea that it was intentional. This book was published after Zweig’s death, and I have to wonder that he would polish it more had he intended on publishing it. There is a difference in the writing, the first pages where he describes so completely and with the most literary care the post-office of the title differs too much from the point form format of the end. One could argue that it reflects his brilliance, as the vocabulary and pace of his prose seem to change with the changes on Christine. Well, maybe... but I am not convinced.

I am putting his other books published in English on books to check it out.
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Nov 02, 2009

Troy rated it

Shelves: 1913, read-in-2009, nyrb-books, favorite-novels

I loved this book!

I bought it on a whim in one of the few bookstores in Mexico City which had books in English. Since I had little time nor inclination to read in Mexico, it took me a month to finally pick it up and read it. And wow.

We follow Christine, a girl in her mid-twenties who has never enjoyed the thrill of youth. She grew up in Austria during WWI, and watched her family's possessions and members disappear during the onslaught. After the war she watched what rema...moreI loved this book!

I bought it on a whim in one of the few bookstores in Mexico City which had books in English. Since I had little time nor inclination to read in Mexico, it took me a month to finally pick it up and read it. And wow.

We follow Christine, a girl in her mid-twenties who has never enjoyed the thrill of youth. She grew up in Austria during WWI, and watched her family's possessions and members disappear during the onslaught. After the war she watched what remained vanish in an imploding economy. Broke, near-destitute, and taking care of her dying mother, she has no idea how miserly her life is... UNTIL her aunt, who is rich and lives in America, invites her to come to a resort in Switzerland.

When she arrives she suddenly realizes how poor she is; how down-trodden she looks; and how destitute her life has been. She blossoms through Zweig's wonderful writing (which in this part of the book somewhat resembles Henry James' prose) and Christine becomes a beautiful vibrant woman, eagerly devouring her new world, excited at new possibilities that she had never dreamed of, and the object of everyone's attention (esp. the men).

SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

Until something goes wrong. Something which exposes her naivete and reveals the vile superficiality of her new wealthy environ.

And then the book shifts gears. Suddenly the prose is desolate and dry; closer to Dashiell Hammett or the Hemingway who wrote "A Clean Well-Lighted Space." Everything is gray and hopeless and Christine is once again a post-office girl, herself like her office, drab, gray, hopeless. But now she is aware of her plight and is filled with rage and hate.

Until she meets a compatriot who shares her sensibility.

My friend thought the second half of the book felt forced, but I disagree. I've often felt like Christine, since I come from an incredibly modest background and have spent much time around the rich. To me, Christine feels real and true. I love the way that the novels constantly misdirects us (for example, leading us to believe that Christine will be saved by one of the (few) gallant men she has met - from the honest and earnest school teacher to the valiant and stalwart titled gentleman who takes her under his wing in Switzerland).

Anyway, this novel was never published, and perhaps never finished. Zweig supposedly contemplated a third part to this book which would have transformed this book from a Jamesian failed-Cinderella story into a Tarantino revenge/caper. I'm glad he didn't, since I like the mystery we are stuck with, but still... a writer as kick ass as Zweig could deliver an amazingly doomed Bonnie and Clyde ending to his dark Cinderella story.(less)

· see review

Aug 09, 2009

Irina rated it

Yet another amazing novel by Zweig!

Zweig has an amazing skill to penetrate the character’s soul, to capture every feeling, every thought, every breath!

I was BLOWN away by his psychoanalytical skills when I read his other novel: “Beware of Pity”, whose main character was a male. But in this book, he is outstanding in his ability to get down to the darkest places of a female soul and mind. How he captures every move and thought when Chrisgtine puts expensive cloth on for ...moreYet another amazing novel by Zweig!

Zweig has an amazing skill to penetrate the character’s soul, to capture every feeling, every thought, every breath!

I was BLOWN away by his psychoanalytical skills when I read his other novel: “Beware of Pity”, whose main character was a male. But in this book, he is outstanding in his ability to get down to the darkest places of a female soul and mind. How he captures every move and thought when Chrisgtine puts expensive cloth on for the first time in her life, how she is swept of her feet when she enters the new world of wealth and burning and uncontrollable desire, the world that she has never experienced , the world in which she is reborn as another person, and can never go back to who she was or appeared to be before…

Second part opens a new chapter in Christine's life - she is no longer the same person - we get used to good things very quickly and get addicted to them very quickly without knowing the danger of it.
Christine had lived a very primitive, poor life lacking any excitement - but had been perfectly content because she had not known any better until she went to Switzerland. So when she got back to her old reality she no longer could look at it with the same eyes - she was no longer the same person - everything and everyone around her irritated her.
So she became a very unpleasant and angry person just as a way to release her emotions and created the world of past memories and imagination that she was leaving in day after day until she could no longer bear this, so she bought a ticket to Vienna

In Vienna, she meets Ferdinand, an acquaintance of her sister’s husband, and he, just like her, hates his life and everyone around him. He is a war veteran, and works as a construction worker, even though studies to be an architect before the war. They hit it off and start spending time together. They could understand each other, can related to each other. Poverty is killing them. At the end, out of despair, they decide to commit suicide. But at the last moment, they saw another way to change their lives.

Favorite Quotes:

Pg 105: “ Someone who's on top of the world isn't much of an observer: happy people are poor psychologists. But someone who's troubled about something is on the alert.”

Pg 116: “Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.”

Pg 139: “Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can’t be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world cannot add to it.

Page 147: “Because suddenly she hates everyone and everything, herself and everyone else, wealth and poverty, everything about this hard, unendurable, incomprehensible life.”

Pg 158: "She had no clear idea what she wanted, other than to get away, away from the village, from her work, from herself, from the person she was condemned to be." (less)

· see review

Nov 15, 2008

Stephen rated it

I read Stefan Zweig's (1881-1942) "Chess Story" six months ago and thought it was excellent, and this novel is just as good. "The Post-Office Girl" is the story of desperate lives in Austria during the years just after World War I. Numbed by the war years, two characters resentful of the bourgeois wealth they see around them, wealth from which they seem forever excluded, are driven together to contemplate crime and suicide (indeed there is something in this story that perhap...more

· see review

Jun 09, 2008

Jeff rated it

Stefan Zweig deserves to be better known in the US. Born in Austria at the turn of the 20th century, Zweig was internationally known and admired in his day, and remains so in Europe. He writes a finely textured prose that is adept at exploring the inner psychological workings of his characters (not surprising for someone who counted Freud among his personal friends). The Post-Office Girl was a manuscript found among Zweig's papers after his suicide in 1942, and may be incomplete. It explores...more

· see review

Apr 01, 2010

Verena rated it

only book I've read by Stefan Zweig so far--partly interested because it describes Austria at a time before my mom was alive. "You wouldn't believe what a dead finger does to a living hand." Again, crushing poverty, a man and a woman unable to form a life together. The Cinderella part was very convincing--Christina was easily able to accommodate to a wealthier lifestyle, and she felt more alive, but the real power is in the minds of the other wealthy people, and she couldn't overcome t...more

· see review

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About Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoyed literary fame.
His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London,...more

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Quotes from The Post-Office Girl

“Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.” — 7 people liked it

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.” — 3 people liked it

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