Seven Years

Mar 12, 2013 ميّ أحمد rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: روايات

تدور هذه الرواية على لسان الشخصية الرئيسية وهو طالب في فن العمارة يتزوج من صديقة له تدرس معه سونيا مثال للفتاة الكاملة التي يحلم بها الرجال .. إيفونا تدخل على الخط وهي فتاة يتعرف عليها أليكس في مغامرة مشاغبة مع مجموعة من رفاقه فتصبح كلصقة على الجرح ..

إيفونا بولندية مهاجرة غير شرعية قبيحة كما يصفها الكاتب (وإن كان قد عدل عن ذلك في بعض المقاطع ) لا تملك أي سمة من سمات الجمال شخص يكاد يكون غير مرئي وهي بذلك تشكل النقيض من زوجته الفوضى التي تعيشها إيفونا المنساقة بلاأي حد تجاه إليكس تذكره بطفولته وح...more

تدور هذه الرواية على لسان الشخصية الرئيسية وهو طالب في فن العمارة يتزوج من صديقة له تدرس معه سونيا مثال للفتاة الكاملة التي يحلم بها الرجال .. إيفونا تدخل على الخط وهي فتاة يتعرف عليها أليكس في مغامرة مشاغبة مع مجموعة من رفاقه فتصبح كلصقة على الجرح ..

إيفونا بولندية مهاجرة غير شرعية قبيحة كما يصفها الكاتب (وإن كان قد عدل عن ذلك في بعض المقاطع ) لا تملك أي سمة من سمات الجمال شخص يكاد يكون غير مرئي وهي بذلك تشكل النقيض من زوجته الفوضى التي تعيشها إيفونا المنساقة بلاأي حد تجاه إليكس تذكره بطفولته وحياته السابقة .. خضوعها له بلا أي شرط ولا قيد ولا تطلب يجعل أليكس يدخل معها في علاقة غريبة الشكل محورها الجنس و الإحساس بالسلطة والرجولة والتفوق خاصة وهو يعيش في ظل نجاح زوجته وصعودها ليختبر مشاعر متضاربة في الوقت الذي تبذل سونيا الزوجة جهدها لتأسيس شركة التصاميم المعمارية ..وهكذا فالرواية هي قصة لمثلث الزوج ، الزوجة والعشيقة
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أحداث الرواية تدور في أوساط طبقة برجوازية تسود بها لغة التصاميم والمعمار والهندسة ويتضح أن الكاتب بذل جهدا للخوض في هذه الأمور كما إن رفيقة سونيا فنانة تشكيلة و الأمر لا شك يتطلب ثقافة فنية من الكاتب وهذا ما نجح فيه بيتر شتام إلا إن أهمية الرواية في إإظهارها للجانب المظلم في علاقات الحب والزواج إن جاز تسمية تلك العلاقة الغريبة بالحب .. سونيا الجميلة الذكية المثقفة المصممة الناجحة تمثل جانب الأمن في حياة ألكيس بينما إيفونا القبيحة العاملة في مكتبة جامدة سلبية تتقن الصمت لكنها تهب جسدها لألكسندر وتتبعه بكل خضوع .. نموذج للرغبات المتناقضة
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كتبت الرواية بشكل جيد ربما لن تشعر بالملل لكن أيضا لم أشعر بالحميمية تجاه الشخصيات ربما هي أجواء وبيئة النص لا أدري !
غير أن شخصية إيفونا البولندية شخصية مثيرة ومستفزة للفضول ، الأهم إنك من خلال الرواية تستطيع أن تستشعر الفارق الطبقي بين بيئة هؤلاء أهل البلد وبين هؤلاء المهاجرين و النظرة الفوقية والترفع وطريقة تعامل إليكس مع إيفونا تظهر شيء من ذلك ربما ولا أدري إن كان الكاتب قصد أن يظهر هذا الأمر في الرواية أم إنه ظهر هكذا وحسب كقارىء وجدت الأمر ظاهر ولا يمكن تجاهله ..

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Dec 09, 2012 Feerena rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own-this-book

Jeder mag seine eigene Meinung zu haben, und die möchte ich auch niemandem absprechen. Aber ich habe es satt, in Kritiken zu seinen Werken immer nur Gemecker über seinen Stil zu lesen. Inzwischen sollte doch klar sein, dass er nun einmal so schreibt - dafür muss man einfach nur ein wenig über ihn lesen -, und ich persönlich bin unsagbar dankbar dafür. Selten liest man so feinfühlige Geschichten, die von den Dramen im Kleinen zeugen. Zumindest scheint es so - eigentlich türmen sie sich hoch auf w...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book very much, although, unlike, say, "Almondis", I was quite relieved to leave the world that had been created in the book when I finished the last page, as it was very oppressive and, at times, very uncomfortable to read. However, I think that this was certainly one of Stamm's aims when he wrote it.

This was a very literary novel - much more so than some of the others that I have read - and I really enjoyed exploring the themes and philosophies that were clearly entwined in the...more I enjoyed this book very much, although, unlike, say, "Almondis", I was quite relieved to leave the world that had been created in the book when I finished the last page, as it was very oppressive and, at times, very uncomfortable to read. However, I think that this was certainly one of Stamm's aims when he wrote it.

This was a very literary novel - much more so than some of the others that I have read - and I really enjoyed exploring the themes and philosophies that were clearly entwined in the narrative; it made me feel like a literature undergrad again (but without the hangover and dodgy velvet waiscoats). At no point, however, did I feel that the book was overly self-conscious or pompous in its exploration of these things - in particular Absurdism and Existentialism - but that Stamm was able to breathe new life into these philosophies and relate them to a more modern context. I also loved the sparse, at times terse, narrative. Again, this didn't seems contrived, as it often did in the owl book (sorry, chemo taking its toll on the memory as well as the hair!), nor was it overly poetic i.e. verbose - but there was a definite poetry to the narrative, which hugely complemented the themes of the book and was a pleasure to read - Stamm really is a masterly writer.

So...themes and stuff. Apologies if all this sounds a bit much but I really got into thinking about the themes in this book and making links between different parts of the novel and stuff that I vaguely remembered about literary theory at college - I had to take refuge in wikepedia on many an ocassion in order to fully remember and/or understand some of the things theory but it was great fun.

The first thing I noticed about this book was that the narration reminded me very much of Albert Camus' existentialist / Absurdist novel "L'Etranger" of "The Outsider" as it's called in translation. If you haven't read this book, I would highly recommend it. Then on the back of "Seven Years" I noticed a review for one of his other novels which said "If Albert Camus had lived in an age when people in remote Norwegian fishing villages had email, he might have written a novel like this" - which is one of the best one line review I've ever read!

I think that in this book, Stamm is revising Absurdism and Existentialism and setting the philosophy in a modern context. Camus was one of the founders of Absurdism and then also used Existentialism as a way of looking at life, the maning of life, and how this related to human relationships. Absurdism is "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any" and Existentialism states that "the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual" and that "authenticity" is the key to this - which means being true to one's own personality, spirit or character. Both of these movements sprang up in France after the Second World War, mainly as a reaction to the horros of the war and the devastation it had caused. I don't think it's any coincidence that the book is set partly in Marseille and that Sonia's mentor is called Albert.

I think that all of the characters in the book - apart from, crucially, Ivona and perhaps Antje - are suffering from the Absurdist conflict. When they are on the awful "minibreak" that culminates in him telling Sonia about Ivona's pregnancy, Alex says "They all seemed to be playing a game, and observing themselves and one another". There are many references in the novel to the middl class, "beautiful people" seeming to be tense, at odds with themsleves and "playing" at social conventions. There are always name cards and a protocol to be followed when at the lakeside houses and when the young people meet after graduation, Alex observes that they are playing at being adults. HE seems to be the only character who can see this - he completely understands the Absurdist tension, and as such he behaves in what seems to be a morally despicable way. Antj says "You behave like a swine, and then you blame your inner beast". Parts of thi novel are very uncomfortable to read i.e. when he makes Ivona go to the toilet in front of him, when he seems to rape her, despite her obvious distress, when he leaves his littel girl in the house on her own, and yet he always manages to justify hhis behaviour to himself. He seems to follow no moral code - the only code he is following is moral Absurdism - i.e. if you believe that life is essentially meaningless, then all moral codes are also meaningless. Sonia seems to be different and yet I think that she is unconsciously following the same path, she just isn't as aware of it as Alex, or perhaps she is so uncomfortable with it that she doesn't articulate it as openly. She seems to be a very emotionless character; despite all the wrongs Alex puts on her, I didn't feel sorry for her at all. Also, when she quotes Hermann Hesse's philosophy early in the novel, you feel that her ability to do this and like his philosophy, gives her a sinister edge. At the end of the book, we find out that Sonia hasn't been comfortable in the world we think is hers and that she has been "playing" at being a wife and mother for 3 years, just as clinically as Alex has at times "played" at being the devoted husband. I loved his treatment of the Absurd in this novel.

The theme of animals in the book also interested me. Antje's horrible paintings are a pivotal part of the narrative. Sonia is a "domesticated" guinea pig, although I don't think she's domesticated - she's more of a robot. Alex is a "swine" and he thinks that Ivona isn't domesticated at all - shes has something wild about her. In an Absurdist way, Ivona is yet another "mad woman in the attic", a modern version of the Jane Eyre madwoman. Instead of having bulging eyes and throbbing veins, however, she has folds of skin hiding rows of moles, a soft, almost unctuous body, vilely attractive, silently and subconsciously sexy, at odds with the modern view of feminine beauty. She is "other". Her coolection of kitsch, her deeply held religious beliefs, her huge appetite, her autism, all make her "other" in a very modern way. I love the way Stamm has updated the madwoman figure. She is so agin all modern ideas of femininity that she has become an animal - and a wild one.

The other theme I enjoyed was architecture - something I know nothing about and I enjoyred reading the quotes and the discussions in the novel about space and how it affects human relations. It's interesting that Alex loves the old fashioned, "ordinary" Aldo Rossi, compared to Sonia's love of Le Corbusier, an architect whom Alex feels patronises the masses and want to turn everyone into "an ideal man". Corbusier has a philanthropic approach, a clear reason for design an Absurdist Alex dosn't like it. He quotes Rossi as saying "Every room contains an abyss" - certainly every situation he find himself has something deeply abysmal about it. Ivona's complete messiness and love of all things useless and ugly directly contrasts with the middle class architects' theoretical debates - again, she is "other". Corbusier's qoute at the start of the novel feels like the central premise of the narration "Light and shadow reveal form". The book does not pass moral judgement, nor does any character seems to feel any remorse, the narrator simply reveals the form of each person, their dark and light. It's interesting that Antje says that passionate love, or amour fou, "is an inferior form of love. If a cultivated person starts acting like a madman, that is humiliating and a sign of immaturity". In this story, noone seems to be madly in love and yet there is a lot of madness.

Finally, I wondered whether the book was in part an allegory about the rich, cultivated, sophisticated West and the unexplored, "other" Eastern European culture, suddenly more exposed and perhaps threateningly nearer due to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Alex's treatement of Ivona and her unwavering stoicism seemed very symbolic of the conflict between East and West.
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Nov 03, 2011 Oscar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: drama, mainstream, míos

La nueva novela publicada en España del suizo Peter Stamm, nos habla de esa clase media alta de europeos que lo tienen todo pero aun así no alcanzan la felicidad, algo que sí logran las clases bajas, inmigrantes sobre todo.

La historia de ‘Siete años’, ambientada en Munich, está narrada en primera persona por su protagonista, Alex, que se la está contando a Antje, una amiga suya y de su esposa, Sonja. De esta manera sabremos cómo llegaron a estar juntos Alex y Sonja, ambos arquitectos, que mantie...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Vishy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading Peter Stamm’s brilliant ‘Unformed Landscape’ a week back, I thought I should read another Stamm book. I decided to read ‘Seven Years’. Here is what I think.

‘Seven Years’ is a story told in the first person by an architect called Alex. The story flits between two time periods – the present when Alex is married to Sonia and has a daughter called Sophie, and the past when Alex was still a student at university. Alex describes how his architectural career evolved since those times. He...more After reading Peter Stamm’s brilliant ‘Unformed Landscape’ a week back, I thought I should read another Stamm book. I decided to read ‘Seven Years’. Here is what I think.

‘Seven Years’ is a story told in the first person by an architect called Alex. The story flits between two time periods – the present when Alex is married to Sonia and has a daughter called Sophie, and the past when Alex was still a student at university. Alex describes how his architectural career evolved since those times. He also describes how he fell in love with the two women in his life, his wife Sonia and a Polish woman, Ivona. Alex and Sonia have been friends since childhood and their relationship evolves more or less naturally with some hiccups. But Alex himself doesn’t understand how he got attracted to Ivona, because by his own estimate, she is poor, unsophisticated, is an illegal immigrant, is too religious, is silent most of the time, is not educated or talented in any way. Sonia’s friend Antje is visiting and the past part of the story is mostly told by Alex to Antje with Sonia not present when the storytelling is in progress.

‘Seven Years’ can be called a story of a love triangle. It can also be called a novel on architecture. In between the triangle love story, Alex describes his thoughts on architecture in some beautiful passages. Peter Stamm’s spare prose is perfect as always. Most of the characters in the book were complex with flaws and that made the story very interesting and real. My favourite character in the book was Ivona – she is complex and flawed in her own way, but has a childlike simplicity too which probably makes her the character who finds the most happiness, inspite of the difficult situation she is in.

I couldn’t resist comparing ‘Seven Years’ with ‘Unformed Landscape’. I discovered that they were written nearly a decade apart and so the author and his writing style and the topics he would have been interested in would have evolved in that period. Giving allowance to such things, I feel that though ‘Seven Years’ was good, ‘Unformed Landscape’ was brilliant. Because I remember when I finished reading ‘Unformed Landscape’, I refused to let go off the book and carried it around for a couple of days, browsing it and reading my favourite passages again and again and refusing to pick up another book. That rarely happens to me. It is still there on the top of my book pile waiting to be re-read. I didn’t feel the same way about ‘Seven Years’. Of course, the problem is mostly with me, because after reading ‘Unformed Landscape’ I was expecting a similar book in ‘Seven Years’. But ‘Seven Years’ is not like that. It is a good book. It is worth a read. But in my opinion ‘Unformed Landscape’ is better – more dazzling, more brilliant and more beautiful.

I loved the cover of the edition of ‘Seven Years’ I read. It had two parts – a translucent dust jacket which had the title and the author’s and translator’s names. The cover image was on the actual cover which was visible through the translucent dust cover. Both of them together created a beautiful effect. This is probably not a new idea for cover designers, but this is new to me. I loved it.

If you like complex love stories with an architectural backdrop, you will love ‘Seven Years’. I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

I thought about my new blueprint. It must be possible to create space that would allow feelings, that would enable and communicate the sort of freedom and openness I was thinking of. I envisaged lofty transparent halls, open staircases, the play of light and shade. I wasn’t quite sure whether I was awake or dreaming, but all at once I saw everything before me, clear and distinct.

I had reckoned I would get sick of Ivona sooner or later, and get rid of her, but even though the sex with her interested me less and less, and sometimes we didn’t sleep together at all and just talked, I couldn’t shake her off. It wasn’t pleasure that tied me to her, it was a feeling I hadn’t had since childhood, a mixture of freedom and protectedness. It was as though time stood still when I was with her, which was precisely what gave those moments their weight. Sonia was a project. We wanted to build a house, we wanted to have a baby, we employed people, we bought a second car. No sooner had we reached one goal than the next loomed into sight, we were never done. Ivona on the other hand seemed to have no ambition. She had no plans, her life was simple and regular. She got up in the morning, had breakfast, went to work. If it was a good or a bad day depended on certain little things, the weather, some kind words in the bakery or in one of the houses where she cleaned, a call from a friend with whom she had a drink after work or went to the movies. When I was with her, I participated in her life for an hour and forgot everything, the pressure of time, my ambition, the problems on the building sites. Even sex became completely different. I didn’t have to make Ivona pregnant, I didn’t even have to make her come. She took me without expectations and without claims.

Sometimes I fished out my old papers, projects I had worked on in college, competition entries from the time we started the business. Most of it looked alarmingly banal to me. But in the drawings I still sensed something of my mood in those years, my determination to go new ways. Nothing was sacred to me then, and nothing seemed impossible. For all the limitations of the work, there was a kind of truthfulness in it, a freshness that our current designs no longer had. I could understand architects like Boullée, who eventually turned into draftsmen pure and simple, without ever craving to see one of their designs realized. It was only in the fictive world of plans and sketches that you were free to do everything the way you wanted. I started drawing in the evenings, usually oversize interiors, empty halls with dramatic light effects, sacral buildings, labyrinths, and subterranean complexes.

Have you read Peter Stamm’s ‘Seven Years’? What do you think about it?(less)

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Feb 04, 2012 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think this was the easiest prose I've ever read in a book that was simultaneously pretty deep. I read it because a reviewer compared the author's work to Camus. Which was foolish, no one touches Camus. But it was a good book, an easy book in many ways and the characters were unusually credible. This is especially notable as they represent sorts of extremes in behavior (the mistress incapable of refusing, the wife orchestrating every aspect of her life, the husband claiming no responsibility or...more

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Apr 17, 2012 B.E. Scully rated it 5 of 5 stars

It’s tempting to summarize the plot of Peter Stamm’s Seven Years (as I began to do when I first sat down to write this review) as a rather grim exploration of a man’s obsessive affair with a woman he finds dull and unattractive, but who nonetheless provides him with an escape from the unfulfillment he feels about his successful career and seemingly “perfect” marriage. And yet the more time I spent thinking about this novel—which definitely desires, even demands, that readers do as much—the more...more It’s tempting to summarize the plot of Peter Stamm’s Seven Years (as I began to do when I first sat down to write this review) as a rather grim exploration of a man’s obsessive affair with a woman he finds dull and unattractive, but who nonetheless provides him with an escape from the unfulfillment he feels about his successful career and seemingly “perfect” marriage. And yet the more time I spent thinking about this novel—which definitely desires, even demands, that readers do as much—the more I realized that if the protagonist, an architect named Alex, truly did not love his wife, Sonia, or find any fulfillment in their life together, then his relationship with his lover Ivona, and thus the novel’s plot, would be far simpler—and far less compelling. For despite the many complications involved in changing one’s life, for those of us lucky enough to live in relatively safe and stable times and places, the remedies for many of the sources of our unhappiness are usually within reach: get a divorce; find a new career path; take a trip or go back to school or seek therapeutic help of some kind; maybe finally buy a dog. But part of the brilliance of Stamm’s novel is his subtle exploration of a much trickier human conundrum: often, we can be fairly fulfilled, even happy, with our lives and yet still yearn for something more profound, something more meaningful. Even more confounding, sometimes we truly can love someone and yet still be inexplicably drawn to something that we find (or don’t find, and continue to seek) in someone else. Thus, as with Stamm’s narrator Alex, the compulsions that can call us toward the rocks don’t necessarily drown out our happiness so much as talk over and around and through it; they don’t replace the existing conversation so much as add a strange, thrilling new vocabulary of their own.

To be sure, both Alex’s marriage and career are built upon practicality rather than passion, and he views his life as a “project” to be calculated like a balance sheet of gains and losses. On the other hand, Alex’s relationship with his lover Ivona, despite the intense sexual attraction that crops up again and again to possess and obsess him, is most often characterized by debasement, disgust, and neglect. At best, he manages indifference or a basic concern for her welfare, and one can’t help but cringe at the mutually sadomasochistic dynamic that seems to compel and propel these two together. In fact, there is much to be made uncomfortable by in this novel, and yet it’s an astonishing accomplishment on Stamm’s part that despite themselves, the main characters (and even many of the minor ones) not only drew me into their hopes and dreams and flaws and failures, but made me care about them, too—a lot like real life, come to think of it.

When Alex’s carefully built life structures eventually come crashing down one by one, he is left with nothing but the raw material of himself with which to rebuild. Stamm provides no answers as to how that rebuilding will occur (or with whom), but I’d like to think that at the end of the novel, as Alex gazes at the “inexplicably beautiful” (and notably empty) sky above him, he has finally begun to understand that galvanizing German concept of Sehnsucht: the intense yearning for that unnameable, ungraspable something, defined by C.S. Lewis as the “inconsolable longing” inherent in the human heart for “we know not what.” I would also like to think that Alex can find a way to satisfy some of his more tangible desires without falling into the trap of only really wanting the things he doesn’t have, until he has them. Even more important, perhaps beneath that empty sky, he can make peace with those less tangible “inconsolable” longings that inevitably color our souls with sadness and heartbreak and loss, but without which leave a barren, monotonous palette indeed.

Favorite Quotes:

“She was certainly very beautiful, but there was something unapproachable about her. She was like one of those dolls whose clothes are sewn onto their bodies.”

“Sonia would never say to a man that she loved him, the way that Ivona had said it to me, as if there was no other possibility.”

“She lay there awake, thinking of me thinking of her. The thought made me strangely happy. It was as though we were guarding each other in a world full of strangeness and danger.”
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May 06, 2011 Rebecca H. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Seven Years is written in a distanced, emotionally-detached style while taking as its subject matter emotional detachment. It makes me wonder the extent to which those two things necessarily go together. Perhaps it is possible to write a heated, passionate novel about emotional coldness, but Seven Years is written in the first person from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know much about what he feels and wants, which makes a certain amount of detachment and distance in the writing inevit...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gosh, I'm not sure what to think of this book. I stuck with it largely because of a positive New Yorker review, but it took me a lifetime to read (partly because of my sleep situation with the two kids).

The rough storyline is that a man is married to a beautiful, ambitious, intelligent, successful woman, who is a bit sexually inhibited. He has an affair that he rekindles every few years with a woman who is almost her opposite. The story is told from his perspective, and it is supposed to be a s...more

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Mar 22, 2011 Tze-Wen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc

In essence, Seven Years is about the universal search for happiness. To find it is not as easy as it seems. What constitutes happiness for one person (material wealth, fame, achievements in sport, to name a few things) could mean something entirely different to the next person. The title refers to the so-called "seven year itch", or the tendency to re-evaluate a relationship after a cycle of seven years. Hence, in this novel the quest for happiness implies finding lasting love.
The author paints...more In essence, Seven Years is about the universal search for happiness. To find it is not as easy as it seems. What constitutes happiness for one person (material wealth, fame, achievements in sport, to name a few things) could mean something entirely different to the next person. The title refers to the so-called "seven year itch", or the tendency to re-evaluate a relationship after a cycle of seven years. Hence, in this novel the quest for happiness implies finding lasting love.
The author paints us two pictures; the first features a young and carefree architecture student, who is about to defend his thesis and still believes his future to hold only great things. The second one is of the same man, but taken many years later. Alex is now in his forties, married to Sonia and quite accomplished in business. Yet, the reader can see something is not quite right; is the union still a happy one? Why does Alex wonder whether his wife ever loved him and even stranger, whether he ever loved her?
Through conversations with Antje, the couple's mutual friend of almost twenty years, the unhappy sequence of events between then and now are slowly revealed. The more I learned about Alex's self-centered pity and his misbehavior towards the women in his life, the more I felt contempt for him. Yet, in a way I also understood him well. While I cannot condone his dismal conduct, I do recognize his desperate search for happiness. Perhaps the main reason for his attraction to Ivona, was the fact that she was the complete opposite of Sonia. In her utter devotion to him, Ivona seems to accept Alex's imperfections, unlike his wife who expects him to be nothing less than perfect. But in her blind love she also puts her entire life on hold for him, ignoring the possibility that he might never be hers. At one point, Alex denies any responsibility for Ivona's actions, which is a blatant attempt to excuse his behavior. Yet, his remark carries a grain of truth: we ourselves are ultimately responsible for our own happiness.
What I particularly liked about this book were the obvious character flaws that everyone displayed. This and the sometimes unfathomable motivations behind their behavior made the protagonists all the more real in my eyes. Truly, what would you do if you were in a relationship from which the love had dissipated, and perhaps had stood on shaky grounds from the very beginning?
Confronting and sobering, Seven Years managed to leave me with a lot of food for thought.(less)

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Jun 04, 2013 Robert Wechsler added it

Shelves: german-lit, unfinished

This is the sort of novel I'm usually grabbed by, a novel that combines intellectual conversation with an obsessive relationship. I made it almost halfway through the novel, and despite good writing and Hofmann's excellent translation into English, I was drawn neither to the intellectual conversation nor to the obsessive (partly because so cruel) relationship. Nor to the narrator. Is having someone who is so little formed (due primarily to youth) really a good idea? It’s a bildungsroman novel wi...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Brenda fonseca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Was this badly written or a bad translation?
It wasn't just a stylistic turn. It just often sounded incomplete, stilted.
Otherwise, it was easy reading. Simple vocabulary, simple sentences.
Every character seems superficial, concerned with appearances, cold, unfeeling. Except for the one who is a lump of coal (some sort of autism?), but who seems to have a heart (or is it just that she built a story in her head, and she doesn't deviate from it even when confronted over and over with a different rea...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Kathy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I took this as the main character was living a life he was "supposed" to live and "supposed" to make him happy. Telling point: He realizes his parents would have liked the unattractive simple girl and "never warmed up to Sonia".....Sonia the perfect, cold, boylike, perfect, successful yet ultimately unfufilling woman of his "dreams", the one he was supposed to be happy with.

Not finished yet......but I think he's conflicted here with what he's supposed to do and supposed to make him happy versus...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Tiernan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Stamm's elegant prose perfectly captures the voice of a man torn between the sense that his life ought to be perfect and the certain knowledge that it is not. For this reason alone, the book was a pleasure to read.

If I had to level one criticism against Seven Years, it would be that the frame narrative strikes me as awkward and unnecessary. I was frequently lost as to the exact chronology of the scenes being described, and while I was always able to work out what was going on, I didn't always fe...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Everybookhasasoul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012, translated-fiction

I read this novel in preparation for Peter Stamm’s event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and it was the first book I had read by the author and I have got to say I was impressed. This was a very literary novel and was a good change of pace to what I had been reading at the time. I loved the philosophy that was intertwined throughout the narrative.

All the characters had obvious flaws in them that jumped out to me as a reader. personally I like to think that these flaws were purposely...more

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May 04, 2013 Jafar rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was intrigued by the review of this book in New York Times and decided to read this Swiss writer. The book starts off rather well. Alex, an architect living in Munich, is married to Sonia, another architect and his university classmate, who is bright, driven, and very attractive. But he finds his marriage to be more like a project, with a never-ending series of milestones: build a house, build a business, become successful, make and raise a baby, etc. In college, he had a brief and meaningless...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Friederike Knabe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: german-lit

Alex is caught between two women: one, Sonja, highly desirable, intelligent and independent, and Iwona, drab, quiet, uneducated and totally dedicated. Sonja makes him feel inadequate and constrained, with Iwona he feels confident and free. He is married to one, but cannot let go of the other ... In his recent novel, SEVEN YEARS, Swiss author Peter Stamm explores the complications of intimate human emotions and relationships, seen primarily from the perspective of the man in the middle. While at...more Alex is caught between two women: one, Sonja, highly desirable, intelligent and independent, and Iwona, drab, quiet, uneducated and totally dedicated. Sonja makes him feel inadequate and constrained, with Iwona he feels confident and free. He is married to one, but cannot let go of the other ... In his recent novel, SEVEN YEARS, Swiss author Peter Stamm explores the complications of intimate human emotions and relationships, seen primarily from the perspective of the man in the middle. While at first glance the story has not much new to offer, Stamm's writing is in unexpected ways catching; his ability to reflect, through the mind of his character Alex, on deeper layers of the human psyche, is meaningful and thought provoking beyond the actual story. Being both subject and object of his frequent musings, Alex's detached self-analyses are intriguing: they expose his shifting views of guilt and regret, his dithering between recognition of betrayal and hurt and assertion of breaking free and resolving the conundrums of his situation...

When the novel begins, Alexander has become a reasonably successful architect, especially since he teamed up in life and work with Sonja, his brilliant and ambitious friend from student days. Born into a modest family background, he lacks the confidence of some of his friends, who come from well-to-do families and exude self-assurance and behave accordingly. Sonja's family tends to look down on Alex, making him feel inferior and inadequate, despite his efforts to please and fit in. Nonetheless, "in essence, all was perfect", he describes his marriage many years, "there was nothing that I didn't like about Sonja, and my life was exactly as I had wished for."*) And yet, Sonja is intensely drawn to "creative and lively" Marseille, whereas Alex feels more comfortable in somewhat "parochial" Munich, and even new opportunities in Berlin after the fall of the Wall don't tempt him out of his comfort zone. When, after seven years into his marriage, he has reason to revisit Iwona, he can't do anything but rekindle the old affair. Iwona, an illegal immigrant from Poland, lives in great poverty and does not seem to care, sustained solely by her strong religious beliefs and her conviction that Alex is the only man for her. Alex is both attracted to and repulsed by Iwona and cannot respond to her complete devotion to him. Over the years she has aged less than gracefully, yet, he remains obsessed with something physical about her that he cannot comprehend or explain. While she is holding considerable power over him, she makes him also feel free and unencumbered by the constrains of his "other" life.

I found very little to like in any of the three central protagonists in this novel. Portrayed mainly through Alex's perception of them, the women come across as overdrawn in the personal characteristics that sets them apart. The two sets of parents - Alex's and Sonja's - also demonstrate some formulaic behaviour of their respective social standing. At times, they all appear to be more stereotypical than real, suggesting that they are intended more as constructs to explore the central character's changing frame of mind as he stumbles through life. While Alex may not analyze the impact of his social background on his behaviour, the reader is frequently alerted to it. The most realistically and personably portrayed individuals are secondary characters in the novel such as Antje, Sonja's close friend and Alex's occasional "confessor", who tends to represent Sonja's interests better than she can apparently argue herself.

Stamm's primary focus in the novel is Alex and his complicated and perplexed psyche and the resulting behaviour patterns, set against the realities he lives through. "A person who loves has always already won", Alex, referring to Iwona, defends himself,"it is worse not to have loved, than not to have been loved." Yet, another time, talking about Sonja, he admits "Maybe, our relationship functioned, just because we never really became close." Especially in the discussions with Antje, more fundamental questions on the intricacies of interpersonal relationships come to the fore: What has love and a perfect life got to do with physical obsession or infatuation? Is passion an inferior form of love?

It is surprising to me how the author succeeds in keeping my interest, despite, or maybe because of, maintaining a very detached tone throughout the novel. He applies a style that has Alex's reminiscences flow uninterruptedly into sections of dialog and back, jumping in timelines from past to present to past to future. Throughout the novel he draws us into a reality that is both irritating and familiar until the end that is as unexpected as it is logical and meaningful.

*)Reading the novel in its original, all translations are mine and I have maintained the name spellings of the German text. (less)

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Jul 13, 2011 Anna Maria Ballester Bohn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wollte eigentlich vier Sterne vergeben, aber ich bin so knauserig in letzter Zeit. Nicht unbedingt mitreissend, und die Figuren gehen nicht ganz so in die Tiefe, wie ich es mir gewünscht hätte. Trotzedem schafft es Peter Stamm einer Geschichte, die uns eigentlich anwidern oder wenigstens langweilen sollte, Poesie und Licht zu geben, wie die Gebäude, die Alexander nur für sich entwirft. Einige Moment sind hart, aber die Zartheit - oder Zärtlichkeit - überwiegt. Dabei kommt nie Kitsch heraus. So m...more

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May 06, 2013 Nikki Magennis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dreamy, strangely compelling story of one man's marriage and long standing affair. Echoes of Kundera, and a bit of a self conscious literary slant (no quotation marks in the speech, for example, everyone's an architect or an artist, it's all a little bit too hip to be really as piercing as it might have been). Overall, though, unsettling, fascinating hints at what drives us as people and in relationships. And some interesting - if slight - thoughts on architecture, too.

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Apr 13, 2012 Tuck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: oh-loyd-i-wanna-be-hearkbroken

most all have some sort of addiction, maybe it's to crafting gross macrame do-dads, or cigarettes, heroin, booze, sex, bacon, running, reading, spanking, getting spanked, love, happiness.....
but what if you were addicted to yourself? sure sure, an old greek tale, but really, what if, the only way you can be happy is to indulge in yourself, to your appetites, your sex, your love, to the utter length of screwing over your family, friends, colleagues, lovers, children? and then tell us the story ho...more

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Nov 06, 2011 Jerelyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book, in the end, seemed to follow some sort of Nabakov-like plot. A man spends his entire adult life obsessed with a woman who offers no aesthetic pleasure, no intellectual compatability. Yet, she will never fully be his because of the choices they've made in life. The narrator's actions, however, lead them to be connected forever.

It's now apparent to me, after reading two of Stamm's books, he has experienced a similar yearning in his own life.

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Jun 17, 2012 John Pappas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Almost like a Bergman film in its quiet, complex portrait of a failed marriage between young German architects. The brutally selfish narrator, stricken by wanderlust and not entirely sure of what he wants (or even who he is) and the quiet complicity of his wife and mistress set up a compelling narrative that drives toward a devastating end.

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Aug 21, 2011 Uwe Hook rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating book. From the outside, he's living a perfect life with a perfect wife and the perfect family. And, strangely, he's only attracted to an unattractive person has nothing in common with. It's a very complex character, described in an unemotional prose. I was fascinated by the character, still not sure why.

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Oct 30, 2011 Jennie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I really thought this one would go somewhere but it did't, nothing much ever happened. The worst part of it for me was that I felt indifferent to all the main characters - didn't like them, didn't care what would happen to them, wasn't invested in the story at all. Not recommended.

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Jul 24, 2012 Tiffin-Seneca Public rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cm

This is a beautifully written, heartbreaking novel. Alex finds himself drawn to a woman who is completely different from his wife in every way and finds himself in a self destructive situation. Stamm writes so well of the battle Alex fights with himself.

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Sep 02, 2012 Graf rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a dark tale of two young architects in Munich who marry and start a firm, with a backdrop of infidelity and angst. The story isn't a particularly pleasant one, but Stamm's writing and characters put on par above most.

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Feb 13, 2012 Christina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Especially enjoyed the prose style and detailed images. Enjoyed the beginning more than the end, but will definitely be seeking out more Peter Stamm (translated by Michael Hofmann)...possibly Unformed Landscape.

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Feb 04, 2012 Carmen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I chose this book for a book club because it was written by a Swiss author. It was... interesting. We had a lot of discussion about it... although I didn't love it, if I come across another book by him I will read it because I am curious as to what else he writes about.

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Jul 29, 2011 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not an unsurprising view of marriage when you consider a German wrote it. Depressing, loveless marriage...depressing, loveless affair...depressing depressing depressing. Great beach read.

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Sep 04, 2012 Patricia L. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a haunting account of two parallel relationships of one man.
I stayed up all night reading this well written/well translated piece about modern relationships.
A project.

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