Visitation

Jun 22, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Elizabeth by: translation 2010 list

Shelves: 2011, reviewed

I get tangled up in themes without meaning to. I'm already wandering through the woods of a book when I realize that it is covering the same ground I've walked before. Not exactly the same path, just the same feeling, the trees rustle the same way in the breeze, the light seems to pattern through the leaves the same way. I'm filled with a sense of familiarity. I cannot get lost here, I know the ground. I know that these may not be the same trees but they are the same species. I recognize them. I...more I get tangled up in themes without meaning to. I'm already wandering through the woods of a book when I realize that it is covering the same ground I've walked before. Not exactly the same path, just the same feeling, the trees rustle the same way in the breeze, the light seems to pattern through the leaves the same way. I'm filled with a sense of familiarity. I cannot get lost here, I know the ground. I know that these may not be the same trees but they are the same species. I recognize them. I can walk along without getting lost.

Visitation does that. The garden reminds me of Elizabeth von Arnim's and the house of Howards End and the tone of The Breakwater House, filled with love and loss and place. I loved Howard's End for that sense of place. All these houses, the people coming in and out of them, and only a few understood that there is a connection between the dweller to the location, the land, and the land's history. The place has an impact on us, it has meaning, or we create meaning from being there. Those that love where they are fill it. A place, a house, has a soul and watching it change, age, die, is like watching a person do those things. Virginia Woolf has shown us that, too.

A place is a form of history. What happens on this particular spot of land, to these people, will show the reader historical events, how the property is handled, who passes through and why, directs our attention to political, social, and class concerns. Some historians have done it on a grand scale, like London: A History (although I make no comment on whether they have done it well or not). Reading this slim volume was like reading a social history, in some ways, since it spans such an important time period in German history, but it was more like listening to someone tellIng me familial stories, sometimes vague, sometimes painful, pieces missing, motivations lost, parts embellished to be more dramatic, and others glossed over because they are too painful for the teller to speak.

Jenny Erpenbeck is a wonderful story-teller. Her characters, all seen only briefly, live and die vividly (sometimes too vividly), and I am captured by their presence, even though they appear for only a few pages each. She writes like she's invoking spirits to dance for us and then vanish, while my eyes adjust to the sudden dark. She reminds me a little of Isak Dinesen, too, with her Shadows on the Grass. This is what I mean:

A tightrope walker is what she wanted to be, or else a lion tamer, but this she confided to no one, not even her father, the chief mogul, who was really chief consul, all she wanted to do was laugh and travel for the rest of her life while her sisters went on growing, got fat, had children. Unlike them, she would go on tour forever and ever. As soon as she was old enough to balance on a tightrope or start training lions, the chief mogul, who was really chief consul, recommended she take a course in stenography. Stenography, said the mogul to the lion tamer, was worth as much as six foreign languages.

She has a way of repeating her phrases, small identifiers, ideas, that reminds me of Dinesen's circular narrative in Shadows on the Grass although they are not otherwise similar. She has a deft way of saying what she means though. The book would not have succeeded with her interwoven patterns without her ability to draw attention in and out as she does. It lags only at the end. I felt the story dying before the house did, as if decay was settling into her ideas as much as in this place she'd created. I haven't decided yet if it was intentional but it was disappointing. I wanted something more from the ending than this collapse.(less)

31 likes · like · see review

Oct 29, 2012 Fionnuala rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Fionnuala by: ·Karen·

Imagine a geologist examining a cross section of a particular landscape. He would point out why this layer of rock is so compressed and why that one is less so, why this layer of gravel was trapped just there and what the shape and age of those fossils indicate. He would read the layers of the landscape as if he was reading a history book with illustrations.
Jenny Erpenbeck reads the layers of twentieth century Germany in a similar way. Just as pockets of petrified sand beneath bedrock can still...more Imagine a geologist examining a cross section of a particular landscape. He would point out why this layer of rock is so compressed and why that one is less so, why this layer of gravel was trapped just there and what the shape and age of those fossils indicate. He would read the layers of the landscape as if he was reading a history book with illustrations.
Jenny Erpenbeck reads the layers of twentieth century Germany in a similar way. Just as pockets of petrified sand beneath bedrock can still display a wave-like pattern, immortalising the winds that blew accross the water which covered the sand long ago, Erpenbeck’s analysis is sewn through with heart stopping glimpses of turbulent passages in the lives of real people during significant moments in that period.
The book which results from this examination resembles a piece of art more than a traditional story. She extracts sections from almost every decade of the twentieth century and overlays them to see the patterns which emerge, just as soil overlays sand and sand overlays rock, or vice versa as occurs in the geologically unusual Märkisches Meer area outside Berlin to which the book is a kind of monument. It is not for nothing that she quotes Georg Buchner on the fly-leaf: As the day is long and the world is old, many people can stand in the same place, one after the other.
There is one particular theme that she returns to constantly and which is beautifully symbolised by an old wooden door (incongruously leading to a broom cupboard), which is decorated with twelve scenes depicting the Garden of Eden. Germany had it all, she seems to say, wealth, culture, traditions, the horn of plenty. But it wasn’t enough:
Whether it was ’38 or’39, or perhaps 1940 when they began to use the dock belonging to the abandoned house next door, and when her husband built the boathouse beside the dock - she’s no longer sure when that was. Surely he hadn’t built the boathouse until the next-door property belonged to them, but when was that? Summer after summer swimming, sunbathing, and picking raspberries at the edge of the woods...and her laughter is the laughter of today, of yesterday...While she was spending her whole life laughing, her blond hair imperceptibly turned white...Today or yesterday, she is sitting with friends around a large pot in which crabs are floating, crabs she caught herself, gripping them firmly behind the neck, and later boiled until they turned red. Eating such a crab is not simple. First you twist the creature’s head off and suck its juices, then you rip out the claws and use a tiny skewer to pull out the meat.
The house in which the paradise panelled door stands is a symbol too for a Germany that is gone; no one gets to grow old in it.
In summer, he always took one last swim before leaving...When he will have swum here for the last time is something he no longer knows. Nor does he know whether the German language contains a verb form that can manage the trick of declaring the past the future.
(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Dec 07, 2011 ·Karen· rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in-german, favourites

Stunning.

A grand summer house on a lake just outside Berlin is the focal point of twelve stories of those who arrest a space there from the turmoil in central Europe between the Weimar Republic and the post Re-unification period, with all the shifts and dislocations as ideologies and regimes pass. Attempts to fix themselves to a piece of earth are fruitless. In between each chapter we have the constant gardener, whose pragmatic planting, pruning and propagating is described in a tone of incanta...more Stunning.

A grand summer house on a lake just outside Berlin is the focal point of twelve stories of those who arrest a space there from the turmoil in central Europe between the Weimar Republic and the post Re-unification period, with all the shifts and dislocations as ideologies and regimes pass. Attempts to fix themselves to a piece of earth are fruitless. In between each chapter we have the constant gardener, whose pragmatic planting, pruning and propagating is described in a tone of incantation, in the quiet repetitive cadence of ritual: "In summer he sets out sprinklers on both lawns, twice each day they will bow to one side and then the other for half an hour, once early in the morning and once at dusk, meanwhile he waters the flowerbed, roses and shrubs." A relief, a foil, a contrast to the forces of man-made history whirling and sliding around him.
The set-up has been compared to Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, but the treatment here is marked by finesse and subtlety, not adjectives that I would dream of using anywhere near Mr Mawer's attempt to get a contract in Hollywood (I never heard he'd managed?). Where Mawer conveyed coincidence and corny sentimentality that turned the vagaries of history into melodrama, Erpenbeck's prose floats and shimmers like the lake at its feet, shot through with glinting sparks of light, with treasure beneath the surface just like the silver cutlery sunk in the shallows at the centre of the lake to hide it from the invading Red Army.
The most impressive chapter in the book is the only one that takes place away from the house. As has happened before in that house, and will happen again, a young woman is hidden inside a cupboard, trying to survive by becoming invisible. However this time it is the granddaughter of the Jewish cloth manufacturer who once owned the next door plot: she is hiding in the Warsaw ghetto. All of the holocaust is condensed into twelve pages of heart-rending, perfectly pitched prose that alone deserves the accolades that this book has garnered. "For three years the girl took piano lessons, but now, while her dead body slides down into the pit, the word piano is taken back from human beings, now the backflip on the high bar that the girl could perform better than her schoolmates is taken back, along with all the motions a swimmer makes, grasping for crayfish is taken back, as well as the study of knots for sailing, all these things are taken back into uninventedness, and finally, last of all, the name of the girl herself is taken back, the name no one will ever again call her by: Doris." Those deaths that wiped out both individual lives and humanity and civilization and culture. Everything turned to dust in the mouth. I wept.

(less)

19 likes · like · see review

Jun 30, 2011 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: distant-lands

oh, i love it when i get to review a book that elizabeth has just reviewed. as though i am going to be able to add anything to the discussion except a weak echo of "i agree! this book is good!!"

so i will just quickly relate my experience with this book which is indeed pretty great.

but not at first.

at first it was killing me with boredom. i have been reading too much teen fiction as of late, and there, the pacing is perfect for hot summer and slipping attention span. this book is NOT for those wh...more

41 likes · like · see review

Dec 21, 2011 Sibyl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This had been recommended to me when I went to a literature festival event about translation. (It had been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.)

As my maternal family came from Germany as refugees, I was intrigued by the idea of a book that offers a perspective on 20th century history through the story of a house and its occupants.

But Jenny Erpenbeck's book is utterly different from English elegiac novels in which the narrative centres around a property (e.g.Howard's End. Brides...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 10, 2011 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: female, novel, germany, year-2000s

An instant favorite. What I’m most impressed with is her ability to be so distant and cold in her poetic approach, yet somehow the overall effect is relatable, and very human. Often when I read books that are poetic in nature (see: Maud Martha, Deep North, even Silk) I feel disconnected from the characters by a veil of constructed beauty. But even though this book has all that beauty and construction and a huge bag of tricks to boot, I always felt emotionally involved. And even though she uses h...more An instant favorite. What I’m most impressed with is her ability to be so distant and cold in her poetic approach, yet somehow the overall effect is relatable, and very human. Often when I read books that are poetic in nature (see: Maud Martha, Deep North, even Silk) I feel disconnected from the characters by a veil of constructed beauty. But even though this book has all that beauty and construction and a huge bag of tricks to boot, I always felt emotionally involved. And even though she uses her bag of tricks (calling it that is a disservice to what’s going on here), it never feels heavy handed or show-offy. All of it is pulled off with subtlety, delicacy, careful pacing and craft, yet it never comes off as sterile.

The book starts off with these illuminating epigraphs:

As the day is long and the world is old, many people can stand in the same place, one after the other. -- Marie in Woyzeck by Georg Buchner

If I came to you, / O woods of my youth, could you / Promise me peace once again? -- Holderlin

When the house is finished, Death enters. -- Arabic proverb

These quotes set the tone for what is about to be revealed, which is similar to seeing several photos of the same place superimposed onto one another, the people in it appearing like ghosts crossing over for a quick visit. Time is compressed in these narratives; the concern here is not only with objective linear time, but with time seen through the blurred lens of memory. And also with the disconnect between objective time (its brutal passing, irregardless of us) and subjective time (our distortions, regardless of fact). The confusion that results is somewhat eerie. I’m having trouble coming up with examples, as she creates these effects over many pages. The chapter entitled “The Cloth Manufacturer” illustrates this very well, and can actually be read as an excellent standalone short story. Here is a sentence from that chapter:

I know, he, Ludwig, says, his father’s only son.

The chapters differ slightly in style depending on what each is saying, yet come together as a whole perfectly... and this chapter had one of the most distinctive styles. The sentences were short, declarative, often containing repetitive information cordoned off into dependent clauses that were then displaced at the end of the sentence. This displacement is intentionally jarring and sometimes awkward, but also the repetition of information had the tone of an ominous fairy tale, like the voice of someone trying to convey a horrible event to a child in the simplest way possible.

Instead of progressing any kind of plot, each chapter is more concerned with filling in every crack in the context surrounding a single place. Context over content, or context being the content. Also: extensive passages are dedicated to pure information (marriage rituals, property rights, land formations, etc.). Since I’ve been reading Walter Benjamin also, I couldn’t help but connect the two. Benjamin talks about how information has increasingly taken over traditional forms of personal and collective history:

The replacement of the older narration by information, of information by sensation, reflects the increasing atrophy of experience. In turn, there is a contrast between all these forms and the story, which is one of the oldest forms of communication.

This information moves along like time itself, relentless and unceasing like the endless seasons’ demands and the gardener’s constant work. Meanwhile, it is only the reader, with the advantage of having the entire book within reach, who is able to piece together the different narratives into a story. For each generation seems isolated from the ones before it and the ones to come, leaving only traces here and there, the scent of camphor and mint, but separated off like a dependent clause at the end of a sentence.

We come to know time intimately as a character; and place as well, for the two are intimately bound:

Home! he’d cried out like a child that would give anything not to be seeing what it was seeing, but precisely in this one brief moment in which he hid his face in his hands, as it were, even this dutiful German official had known that home would never again be called Bavaria, the Baltic coast or Berlin, home had been transformed into a time that now lay behind him, Germany had been irrevocably transformed into something disembodied, a lost spirit that neither knew nor was forced to imagine all these horrific things.

In the middle of this book, the larger context of world history envelopes the smaller context of our story; we watch helplessly as our characters’ fates are dominated by the Holocaust and the war. We see time and place transformed by horrible events, distorted so that nothing is familiar. Nothing will be the same again. The consequence of linear time is its one-way-ness, we can never go back. And it is as if the novel pivots around this one point. We can never see these same places the same way, never associate them with the same uncontaminated memories.

This is what makes the book so tragic: it keeps going. We see the generations roll on, they deal with what they must, and soon even the horrors are forgotten and we, the readers, are the only ones left with the memories of what happened here, in these familiar places.

Two other notes. 1) The translation is excellent! Attention and detail and subtlety on the minutest level. 2) the Goodreads description says this was a bestseller in Germany. That blows my mind, that a book of this caliber and complexity can be so popular. Sadly, I cannot imagine it happening here in the US.(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Mar 14, 2012 Teresa Esteban rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, german-lit, historical-fiction

3.5

I know it should be 4 stars but...
I really don't know how to review this book, it's so special, and different and, in it's own way, brilliant.
The way it is structured gives us the contrast between what's changeable (people living in the house, reforms made, periods of History, etc) and what's not (nature, who's also ever changeable but humans have a too short lifetime to witness it). That's why you need to be extremely attentive when reading it, because there are always "correspondences", thi...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 16, 2011 Erma Odrach rated it 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was quite a magical book of poetry/prose by Erpenbeck, who was born in East Berlin. Set in a house overlooking a Brandenburg lake, it is the telling of stories by 12 random people, who occupied it from the Weimar Republic to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But almost none of the people have names, rather, they are identified by profession: the gardener, the architect, the Red Army Man. She writes of the gardener, who gives the reader continuity, "...he's always lived there, everyone...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 02, 2013 Margaret Sankey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the books I brought home from New Year's in Munich, this is a spare novel, almost the opposite of something like Peter Høeg's History of Danish Dreams, in which he follows a sprawling narrative of a family in 20th century Denmark. Erpenbeck chooses to focus on a property on a lake near Berlin, illuminating the 20th century through flashes of moments in the lives of the people who live there it--the Wilhelmhine landowners who sells it for lack of a male heir, the Weimar lawyer who builds t...more

like · see review

Dec 28, 2011 Kerfe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

For some reason, I picked this up thinking it was going to be a mystery, and it was, just not in the way I had imagined.

I got lost in the book--literally--I couldn't keep the characters and their stories straight. But maybe the merging in my mind only reflects the fact that they all eventually become strangers to themselves. They also become lost, losing track both of where they are going and where they have been.

A parcel of land on a lake in Germany travels through time...or time travels throug...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 11, 2011 Louise Silk rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Ms. Erpenbeck focuses on a constant place of a shimmering lake, house, and woodlands and discovers the tapestry of characters as they pass through.

The gardener is the only one to appear throughout the book.There is something soothing and reassuring about his constant reemergence, as he spans the seasons, adding topsoil, sowing grass seed, gathering fallen branches, coaxing nuts from their soft husks, and stacking logs in the woodshed. He is a symbol of the predictable cycles of life regardless...more

like · see review

Jan 24, 2011 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-favorites

It is very rare that a book combines a mastery of language and cadence with an assured and innovative vision to redefine the literary landscape. Visitation is such a book. It is, to my mind, a contemporary masterpiece.

It will be widely compared, no doubt, to Simon Mawer’s The Glass House, because its property on a Brandenburg lake outside of Berlin is at the heart of the novel. Yet in that book, Mr. Mawer sacrificed characters to themes. In Visitation, Ms. Erpenbeck does something far more darin...more It is very rare that a book combines a mastery of language and cadence with an assured and innovative vision to redefine the literary landscape. Visitation is such a book. It is, to my mind, a contemporary masterpiece.

It will be widely compared, no doubt, to Simon Mawer’s The Glass House, because its property on a Brandenburg lake outside of Berlin is at the heart of the novel. Yet in that book, Mr. Mawer sacrificed characters to themes. In Visitation, Ms. Erpenbeck does something far more daring: she focuses on time and place as a constant, while each of her characters is (to quote Macbeth) “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.” She is absolutely unflinching in her ability to look beneath the surface to the tapestry of individuals who come and go while the shimmering lake and woodland remain.

Each of the characters receives his or her moment on the stage, with only one who consistently appears: the gardener. There is something soothing and reassuring about his constant reemergence, as he spans the seasons, adding topsoil, sowing grass seed, gathering fallen branches, coaxing nuts from their soft husks, stacking logs in the woodshed. He is a symbol of the cycles of life, spring, winter, summer, fall, always predictable, regardless of the temporary drama being played out.

To illustrate the temporal nature of all characters, each is only defined by his or her profession: the architect, the Red Army Officer, the writer, the illegitimate owner. There is one exception: the Jewish characters are named: “Hermine and Arthur, his parents. He, himself, Ludwig, the firstborn. His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst. Their daughter Doris, his niece.” Indeed, that chapter – the Cloth Manufacturer – contains some of the most powerful writing I’ve ever read, as Erpenbeck uses cadence and repetition to move her characters towards one of the worst horrors of modern history.

On the chapter on Doris, Erpenbeck writes, “For three years the girl took piano lessons, but now, while her dead body slides down into the pit, the word piano is taken back from human beings, now the backflip on the high bar that the girl could perform better than her schoolmates is taken back, along with all the motions a swimmer makes, the gesture of seizing hold of a crab is taken back, as well as all the basic knots to be learned for sailing, all these things are taken back into uninventedness, and finally, last of all, the name of the girl herself is taken back, the name no one will ever call her by: Doris.”

Descriptive and passionate writing like this – in the chapters that focus on the gardener and on the Jewish family – is interspersed with the mundane elements and ritualsof life, for example: “Present exigency: The property that is the subject of the proceedings. Pending determination of ownership. Registration number 654.”

The language, in many cases, is like lyrical poetry. I must acknowledge the outstanding translator, Susan Bernofsky, who expertly translated this masterwork from German to English. For literary readers, all I can say is, this is why we read.

(less)

5 likes · like · see review

Nov 29, 2010 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: german-lit

"Colourful is only that what she can still remember, surrounded by darkness of which she is at the core, her head [...] carries colourful memories, memories of somebody, who she was. Probably was. Who was she? Whose head was her head? Who owns the memories?" The "Girl ", who ponders these questions, is one of the protagonists in Jenny Erpenbeck's innovative and powerful novel "Visitation". Memories of innocent excitement and happiness of youth, of arriving, settling down, and then having to leav...more "Colourful is only that what she can still remember, surrounded by darkness of which she is at the core, her head [...] carries colourful memories, memories of somebody, who she was. Probably was. Who was she? Whose head was her head? Who owns the memories?" The "Girl ", who ponders these questions, is one of the protagonists in Jenny Erpenbeck's innovative and powerful novel "Visitation". Memories of innocent excitement and happiness of youth, of arriving, settling down, and then having to leave again and of families and people loved and lost form the core of the story. People and events are centred around a lake-side summer house surrounded by expansive woods and gardens in the region just east of Germany's capital, Berlin, affording it the role as the central character and integrating force of the narrative. Using her zooming lens, the author condenses many decades of twentieth century German history into time-specific, intricate and intimate glimpses into the lives of twelve different residents and their families living on the property. While the owners build and add to the house, change it and its grounds over time, leaving visible marks and impressions, they are in turn impacted by the environment and the historical events occurring beyond it.

Starting out more like a fairy-tale, the novel gains intensity as it progresses: the portraits become more intense, reaching deeper into the background of the individuals, also relating their actions to specific historical time periods of the last decades: from the Weimar Republic, through the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, War and Soviet occupation, to Socialist East Germany and Fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond. The Girl's haunting account far away, having had to flee her home and Germany, stands out as one of the most heart-wrenching chapters. In others, the reader senses underlying tense emotions, despite the deceptively detached, often sparse language, that refers to most protagonists only as the Architect, the Writer, the Visitor, etc. or the Gardener. However, despite the apparent indistinctness, the individuals portrayed are engagingly realistic and anything but bland generalizations. Events beyond the calm of the summer house are alluded to, hints that may be easier to detect for the German reader. The narrator's language and style changes slightly as the story moves from one voice to the next. Erpenbeck often uses rhythmic prose, sometimes staccato sentences, repetitions, or lyrical prose to reflect her protagonists' moods and characteristics. While the different individuals pass through the house as transient residents - some return later, allowing for intergenerational connections - only the "Gardener", more a symbol than a person, remains as a constant, his chapters alternating with the others.

The original title "Heimsuchung" has several meanings in German, one of which is "Visitation". This has an ominous or threatening undertone and often refers to ghosts or disease. An additional meaning contained in the term is "searching for home". Both connotations are beautifully captured in stories. For example. the Authoress looks back on a long life, that included fleeing the home of her youth all the way to Moscow and the Urals, and, even while "going home" now to the house and the lake, she is still searching for the "home" that she can emotionally return to. On the other hand, the overconfident Architect, a former Albert Speer collaborator, is on the run, the ghosts of the past having caught up with him: he is locking up, hiding the valuables, leaving the key for the next occupant of the house...

Award-winning Jenny Erpenbeck is a representative of the younger generation of German authors (born in 1967). Many like her were born and raised in then East Germany. Their background enables them to take a different perspective on the past. Inspired by and based on her family's summer house, the author sensitively mixes her own memories and those of people she knew with the wide-ranging fictional reality of her novel. While more recent novels like Simon Mawer's The Glass Room come to mind, in that comparable techniques were used to build the novels, Erpenbeck's voice is fresh and independent and very convincing. "Visitation", published in German in 2008 and now available in the highly praised translation by Susan Bernofksy, was recently chosen by author Nicole Krauss (Great House) as one her favourite books of the year. Having read the novel in its original, all translations are mine. (less)

4 likes · like · see review

Nov 28, 2011 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Overbylass, Esther, Michael

Recommended to Bettie by: Themis-Athena

Shelves: one-penny-wonder, germany, paper-read, published-2008, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, autumn-2011, architecture, gardening, poetry

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

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 24, 2011 Aly rated it 3 of 5 stars

The author breezes through time with little fanfare, chronicling the holders of a parcel of land in East Germany from (as far as I can tell) pre-Weimar days to after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While I give Erpenbeck a lot of credit, I think this book fell flat-- it was neither weighty enough for much of the history it touched on, nor light enough to be a simple, enjoyable read. It also think she failed to truly differentiate the style of the passages for each landholder-- while some are certai...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 21, 2013 Jenny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bought-in-2013, fiction-from-other-countries, fiction-in-english, in-my-library, contemporary, gothic, read-2013

Visitation är en flerskiktad bok. Handlingen fokuserar på ett hus, med en vacker trädgård vid en lika vacker sjö, i Brandenburg och de människor som bor där. Det är en rätt så okomplicerad handling men med ett komplicerat inre liv och språk. Handlingen sträcker sig över flera årtionden under 1900-talet och flera generationer hinner flytta in i huset under bokens gång. Hur vacker huset än må vara så vilar det en förbannelse över platsen. Den lycka karaktärerna känner då de först flyttar in är int...more Visitation är en flerskiktad bok. Handlingen fokuserar på ett hus, med en vacker trädgård vid en lika vacker sjö, i Brandenburg och de människor som bor där. Det är en rätt så okomplicerad handling men med ett komplicerat inre liv och språk. Handlingen sträcker sig över flera årtionden under 1900-talet och flera generationer hinner flytta in i huset under bokens gång. Hur vacker huset än må vara så vilar det en förbannelse över platsen. Den lycka karaktärerna känner då de först flyttar in är inte särskilt långvarig och deras öden är allt annat än lyckliga. Mord, självmord, vansinne, förstörelse är bara en del av platsens förflutna. Trots den brutala bakgrundshistorien är det en vacker bok. Det finns en slags bitterljuv lidelse hos karaktärerna. Trots de hemska händelserna i huset och den turbulenta tid de lever i försöker de samtidigt behålla ett slags vardagslugn.

Trädgårdsmästaren är kanske det främsta exemplet på denna strävan efter lugn och rutin. Hans kapitel är alltid korta, som längst några sidor, och fokuserar på skötseln av husets trädgård. Han klipper, krattar, planterar, gräver och lagar dag ut och dag in. Han säger inte särskilt mycket och fokuserar på arbetet utan att klaga. Rutin med andra ord. Så en dag kommer Röda Armén till huset och rekvirerar det för eget bruk. De förstör husets möbler och trädgården som trädgårdsmästaren har dedikerat sitt liv åt. Till slut försvinner Röda Armén från platsen och trädgårdsmästaren återgår till arbetet med att klippa, kratta, plantera, gräva och laga. Dag ut och dag in. Det finns flera andra karaktärer som drivs av detta begär, men det är nog tydligast hos trädgårdsmästaren.

Det är intressant hur avståndstagande Erpenbeck är till det som händer i Visitation. Det är en brutal, hemsk, vacker och poetisk berättelse som Erpenbeck förmedlar utan att egentligen visa hur som själv känner. De döda slutar nästan att vara människor, trots att de är högst animerade döda, och blir istället livlösa dockor att kassera lite hur som helst. Tänk till exempel på den unga flickan som dör i förintelselägret: ”For three years thr girl took piano lessons, but now, while her dead body slides down into the pit, the word piano is taken back from human beings [...]” Det är kusligt och träffsäkert.(less)

like · see review

Mar 18, 2011 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: librarybooks

‘Until the time comes when a different house will be built on this same spot, the landscape, if ever so briefly, resembles itself once more.’

The central character of this novel is not a person, but a place. And through this place, a grand house and its grounds by a lake in Brandenburg, we see a history of 20th century Germany unfold. A succession of inhabitants, each dislodging another, reflects the political upheavals of the times in which it is set. The gardener provides continuity in this sto...more ‘Until the time comes when a different house will be built on this same spot, the landscape, if ever so briefly, resembles itself once more.’

The central character of this novel is not a person, but a place. And through this place, a grand house and its grounds by a lake in Brandenburg, we see a history of 20th century Germany unfold. A succession of inhabitants, each dislodging another, reflects the political upheavals of the times in which it is set. The gardener provides continuity in this story: he tends the grounds, attending to the work required by the constant ebb and flow of the seasons. Politics may influence occupancy and history, but nature has her own rhythm and requirements.

‘No one in the village knows where he comes from.’

Twelve people, including the gardener, make their homes in this house. Each makes an impact on the house, but each is a temporary visitor. The architect and his wife who create the house include some delightful touches: a small bird carved into the balcony; a hidden closet; and panels depicting the Garden of Eden. Consider the Jewish family who owns the property in the 1930s: they are forced to sell while they wait for visas to enable them to leave the Third Reich.

Generally, the narrative remains with the house and its current occupants. Sometimes it shifts, as it does in a chapter covering the fate of Doris, one of the exiled Jews, to an abandoned house in the Warsaw ghetto.

‘But as long as this sentence still stands, her name is still Doris, and she still exists.’
‘If no-one knows she exists any longer, who will know there is a world when she is no longer there?’

At the end of World War II the house is requisitioned by the Russian army, who make their own mark on it. And ownership? Who can claim ownership in the turmoil after World War II? Different regimes have their own definitions of ownership. But through all of this, almost to the end of the novel, the gardener follows his routines patiently. We never hear from him, and never know how he might feel about the changes taking place around him. And when it becomes clear that his increasing frailty prevents him from maintaining the property to prevent its ruin, it is hard not to see this as a sign that the house will not long outlive the gardener. His continuity of care is a different from of ownership and of respect.

I found this a profoundly moving and beautifully written novel.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 04, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, new-directions, girls-girls-girls

This is a book about a small relatively unimportant piece of land in Germany and the people who happen to have some ties to that piece of land for a hundred years or so. It's just a piece of land alongside a lake. Except for some little bits on construction little changes physically on the piece of land, but being that it is in Germany, and in what would be called East Germany for about half of the 20th Century, and being what history is there are quite a few questions that can be explored just...more This is a book about a small relatively unimportant piece of land in Germany and the people who happen to have some ties to that piece of land for a hundred years or so. It's just a piece of land alongside a lake. Except for some little bits on construction little changes physically on the piece of land, but being that it is in Germany, and in what would be called East Germany for about half of the 20th Century, and being what history is there are quite a few questions that can be explored just by making up stories about a simple piece of land alongside a picturesque lake.

Fill in my usual thoughts on memory and history and the holocaust and you'll get what could be the gist of my review.

The book deals with harsh things but it does so in a very delicate way. I don't meant that as a bad thing. I refer anyone who cares about how I might be (mis)using the term to see the William Gaddis quote in the quote section of my profile, and please ignore the typo in the middle of the quote that is all my doing.

That is my book review. Thank you for reading.

This is an aside.

The idea of place is tricky. What makes a place be designated as a place? Does it encompass all of the history and memory that attaches itself to a certain spatial location? Is it just the spatial location? What about a place that moves? Is there a necessary relation between physicality and place? Is a website a place? It has the word site in the word, and sites are places, right?

In the past week another of the possibly historical moments flared up on goodreads.com. Again, it involved chastising someone who may or may not have done something ethically wrong, or maybe more accurate it can be said that information about one person rubbed lots of other people the wrong way. Like the Ginnie fiasco from an earlier time, it's tough to say exactly what the person did wrong. Especially since no one involved seems to even know anyone who has been wronged by the chastised person.

My take on him (since no one is asking) is that he is a turd and he deserves what he gets. I can't give an answer why this is so. I can't even convince myself that my opinion is correct except that I feel it in my gut, the same way I feel that the Game guys are wrong for what they do and that racist skinheads should have the shit kicked out of them even if they haven't done anything yet. If I apply any kind of rigor to these opinions they fall weakly apart. Fortunately for the world my irrational opinions and what I think should be done to people who break my personal rules for conduct aren't enforced and all you really get for breaking them is a strict but generally silent censure in my head.

I never said why I think he's a turd though. It's not that he is a stalker or a sender of knives in the mail with instructions to use them as dildos; it's rather his response to Meredith, the whole (I'm not going to try to find this actual quote, you probably already know what I'm talking about anyway) 'oh I am the type of person who just can't stand to be involved in conflict so I just can't read these accusations anymore.' Anyone who uses this answer to accusations or in an argument is a turd. A turd who should be locked away in a room so that they can't communicate with anyone else since what they are in effect saying doing is trying to trump the argument or accusation through a side-stepping method that puts them on a moral high-ground and their opponent as muck-dwelling cretin. This is the same answer that has been used in the past by more than one person on goodreads.com threads to attempt a quick moral victory when all of their actual arguments had been destroyed. See for example Scott's attack on Karen's Known World review. Weak argument, name calling (degradation of character), more name calling, and then a quick bowing out of the fight by putting oneself above everyone else (see also Seth. See also Stephen (what is it with the S's here?)). That is what makes you a turd.

This whole thing will pass though.

In a year from now it will be mentioned with DoctorM-gate or whatever name it picks up and someone who maybe is a member of goodreads.com right now, but who doesn't know anyone involved in the drama but who is going to befriend people involved a few months from now will ask about who DoctorM is, or what Ginniegate was, and someone will bring this person up to speed. And then someone else will probably point out about how much better goodreads.com was then (now) then it is now (in the future), and someone else will threaten to quit being involved at all because the site was more fun back then, and even more interesting in an even farther back time, and some people involved now who just lurk and grumble then will come out of lurking and grumble about how much more interesting the reviews were then, and back then (now) they wrote interesting reviews, but now (in the future) they don't write anything anymore, but just grumble about the reviews being stupid these days. And then at another then even farther in the future someone will look back to the then of the not-so-distant future and say how much better it was, but point to the end of September 2010 as being the really awesome time, when there was community and interesting conversations all because of some pervy old dude who wanted young chicks to do themselves with gardening tools (the facts blur over time) and everyone in that farther in the future time sighs and says yes, that was when goodreads.com was fun and good, and they all sigh again and say it's all so idiotic and boring now. And so on and so on, and through it all it is the same place with subtle shifts and shit but it's only through memory that the meaning and importance is built and manipulated. (less)

28 likes · like · see review

Oct 29, 2012 Kirsty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012, purchased-2012, purchased-in-berlin, read-on-holiday, best-of-2012

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this novella, but I saw it in Berlin and just couldn't resist it. The story seemed deceptively simple at the outset, revolving as it does around a gardener, a mayor in Germany and his four daughters, and an architect. The prose was a little repetitive at times, but that was the entire beauty of the story. Those phrases which were repeated by Erpenbeck became more and more powerful as they reached their crescendo. The writing throughout is both delicate an...more

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 20, 2012 Marian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-novels-post-1970, historical-fiction

Ambitious, original, confident, and achieves much of what I think Erpenbeck sets out to do. Three and a half stars may be about right. I quibble with the book's portentous introduction droning on about geologic time, which works against the book's concern with the ubiquity of human suffering. The use of a fairy tale conceit in early chapters is a bit rickety and not of the same level as the greater part of the book, which is a startlingly poetic hybrid of war story and evil nursery rhyme. But wh...more

like · see review

Jan 21, 2012 Jodie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I don't know what I was expecting from this book, but I feel strangely disappointed. We watch the story as though we are the land in which the story is set. We see the gardener tending and nurturing the land, the repitition of the sprinkler is somewhat comforting as it marks the passing of time, and the people that come and go in the house. The destroyers, thieves and lovers.

Some of the vignettes were beautiful, plain and spare and striking, particularly the one titled The Girl (worth reading fo...more

like · see review

Nov 28, 2011 Vicky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-reads, lit-fic

Hmmm, I'm still not sure what to think about this book. The book details the human connections to a small plot of land in Brandenberg, Germany, from pre-Weimar days to post-reunification. Characters ebb and flow with the passing of time, each attempting to root themselves in the earth but with their traces being worn away with the same inevitability as the glacier that eroded the land to create the lake and landscape.

However the leaps in time, from character to character are somewhat disorientin...more

like · see review

Jan 16, 2012 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Teresa by: ·Karen·

I think maybe I would've given this 5 stars if I'd been able to read it straight through rather than in spurts while I was traveling. It's a prose poem of a novel, slim but encompassing the history of Germany starting with a short prologue of the Ice Age to the building of a summer house in one particular wooded area, with much more to follow. If I knew more of German history, I'm sure I would've gotten more out of it, but even without that knowledge, the ebb and flow of the seasons and the poss...more

6 likes · like · see review

May 02, 2011 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, translated-fiction, indie-press

Opening with the above epigraphs, Visitation is a rather stunning, although very short, novel of historical fiction that offers the stories of the inhabitants of a lakefront summer house in the woods of Brandenburg through the movement of time and history in Germany. The prologue opens twenty-four thousand years ago with an advancing glacier, then progresses geologically over the years until the Brandenburg lakes began to form. As the land comes to be settled, it too follows a natural progressio...more Opening with the above epigraphs, Visitation is a rather stunning, although very short, novel of historical fiction that offers the stories of the inhabitants of a lakefront summer house in the woods of Brandenburg through the movement of time and history in Germany. The prologue opens twenty-four thousand years ago with an advancing glacier, then progresses geologically over the years until the Brandenburg lakes began to form. As the land comes to be settled, it too follows a natural progression -- it is parceled off and sold, a beautiful home is built, land is added, subtracted, reparceled, etc. The slow and natural progression of the landscape stands in stark contrast to the rapid events that play out throughout Germany and all of its accompanying turmoil as decades pass, but at the same time, what ultimately happens to this land and to the house mirrors what happens in this country during the twentieth century.

It is on one of these lakes that a wealthy farmer owns a large tract of land, and his daughters are each slated to receive their own parcels as their respective inheritances. But the farmer sells off parts of the land designated for his daughter Klara in three parts, to a coffee and tea importer, a Jewish manufacturer of fine cloth and an architect from Berlin, who is the builder of a fine house of “quality German workmanship.” The rise of the Nazis and the second world war result in changes of occupancy and ownership once again, and the home is requisitioned by the Russian Army as the soldiers come into Germany to liberate the country. As the powers that be begin to contemplate and to build the Berlin wall, the land and the home begin another round of inhabitants under the collectivization policies of the government of the GDR (East Germany). The fall of the wall and its aftermath also bring about their own changes. Through the entire story, the house and the land undergo a series of transformations, and the only thing that remains constant is the character of "The Gardener," a somewhat mysterious and symbolic figure whose story of the work he does on the land is related after each chapter. The author offers brief but very powerful glimpses into the stories of the residents as they move in and lay down a foundation of memories and histories. Happy times spent there also serve as a safe haven and an anchor for some characters in times far removed from their carefree days on the lake. Through it all people live out their private lives in the house and on its grounds, often in contrast to the very public upheavals that have occurred in a century of Germany's history.

This novel is highly reminiscent of Simon Mawer's excellent novel The Glass Room, where the author brought the events of twentieth-century European history to a particular house. But Visitation is vastly different -- where Mawer's book set forth the events of history chronologically in a traditional narrative style, Visitation isn't what most readers would consider a "conventional" novel. It's based more on differing personal perspectives rather than a straightforward chronicle of events. Within each chapter, people and events often float back and forth in time with no warning, and it can be a little disconcerting until you feel like you have more of a bigger picture. Erpenbeck writes her chapters in long paragraphs, so that a single event and connected thoughts are covered, generally relating back to the opening of the chapter so that events can shift or things can get a bit tangential before the chapter circles back and is over. There are times when the prose seems to transform from narrative to melody, as the author often repeats certain lines like refrains from a poem or song. And just as the style becomes comfortable, the author gives the reader a jolt. There are a couple of times where this happens -- first in a heartbreaking chapter from the perspective of a little girl in the Warsaw Ghetto (the only chapter that takes place away from the house), and second in a most disturbing chapter from the point of view of a Russian army officer. There are a few parts of the book that may seem tedious -- pieces of folklore, official documents, minor details about the house and grounds etc., but these things genuinely fit into and enhance the story and should not be glossed over. The characters have their own personas and voices, each with his or her own story, thoughts and feelings, all most excellently captured by the translator, and you cannot help but get caught up in these lives.

It's a beautiful book, and all of the things that make it less than conventional -- plus Erpenbeck's focus on the landscape (if even briefly) "coming to resemble itself once more" despite all of the tumult in our private lives and the world in which we live -- are what appealed to me as a reader. It's a challenging book, but if your focus is on the bigger picture rather than a chapter here and there, it's ultimately a rewarding reading experience. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 01, 2011 MJ rated it 5 of 5 stars

In a slim, 150 page novel, Jenny Erpenbeck manages to cover a wide expanse of history, geography, and individual experience, all centered around a lakeside home outside of Berlin. It is set, primarily, in the 20th century, so war figures prominently, either lurking in the background or taking center stage.

Visitation follows the lives of twelve people who are connected to the house, the book’s main character. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the twelve people. We first meet the unnamed gardene...more

like · see review

Apr 09, 2012 Penny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is beautifully haunting...It is a few days since I finished reading it, but when I think of it, there is this weirdly haunting silence in my brain, as if the melancholy of the book has left an indelible mark. 'You will remember me' it says, 'You will remember me and ache for those people and places that were involved.' I suppose it has something to do with meeting Jenny, and hearing about how the book came about, how the house and land (a huge character in the writing) has such an affe...more

like · see review

Mar 21, 2012 Steven rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: absolutely no one

Shelves: unfinishable

I bought Visitation after after it came up on Whichbook, and I regret the 10 bucks I spent on it. I read the ebook sample and enjoyed the prose, but soon after the first chapter, the book dissolves into an unreadable mess. How atrocities like this get published is beyond me.

This book was originally published in German and so, one would think, must have been good enough to merit translation into English. The problem is not the translation, but the writing itself. There is no plot. Absolutely non...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 26, 2013 M M rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jenny Erpenbeck is a German writer whose Visitation is the story of Germany as seen through the lives of the residents of one house. (She's also stunningly beautiful, but that's neither here nor there.) The characters are largely tragic, mirroring the calamitous twentieth century in their country. To give full vent to the disaster befalling them, the location of the house had to be in East Germany, for after the wars, there was also the bestiality of Communism to keep its residents occupied. Erp...more

like · see review

Aug 14, 2012 Calvin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck is a bleak, cyclical, and stark novel. The story centers around a lake-house in East Germany, and spans over a time-frame of pre and post WW2. The lake-house is thus the central character of this novel and we see the fate of its occupants (from Jewish, to Russian, to German) through the house's eyes. The writing in this novel is repetitive in a way that builds a story in a subtle hinting way; a very clever device. The downside to the novel is there are no central ch...more

like · see review

Aug 28, 2012 Tammi L. rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books that I've read this year and, I dare say, likely to stand among my short list of cherished works. Poetic writing. Great command of characters. Haunting imagery. Some writers wait all their lives to reach this level of word mastery.

The story, poorly summarized: In the beginning, there was the earth and the water. Before it returned to the same, a house was built on the edge of a lake through which love and hate, the best of us and the worst of us was revealed. The "in betwe...more

1 like · like · see review

title link	preview: Visitation
avg rating	preview: Visitation Goodreads rating: 3.77 (435 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8638226-visitation?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348829216l/8638226.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8638226-visitation?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck[/url]

Visitation

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (12)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Books by Jenny Erpenbeck

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Visitation

Quotes from Visitation