The End of Days

A few years ago, I discovered - through the recommendation of a friend - a stunning and poetic little masterpiece titled Visitation, containing a haunting narrative that carefully wove its way in and out of history and time. The author was Jenny Erpenbeck and, since then, I've eagerly awaited her newest work. And finally, it's here.The theme she so beautifully explored - the fluidity of history and time - is front and center of this book as well and, if possible, even more fully realized. Those who have read Kate Atkinson's book Life After Life will note an almost eerie symmetry (although this book was published in Germany in 2012, mere months before the Atkinson book.)The premise derives from the German saying, "Es ist noch nict aller Tage Abend", translated to, "It isn't over until the end of all days." Starting at the turn of the 20th century, a baby girl has lost her brief battle with life during the Habsburg Empire. But what if she had lived? The next of the five interwoven books imagines her as a poor and despondent teenager in Vienna during post World War I Vienna, where - again - she meets up with death. In the next rendition, she has survived into adulthood and is now a fervent Communist until her rendezvous with death. And so on.Unlike the Atkinson book, Erpenbeck's novel goes beyond the "wind back the tape and let's see what happens" scenario. For one thing, there are Intermezzos between each rendition, which prods the reader to see how one minute or one move could make a world of different. There's something more organic about all of it.We never - or, at least, not to the final book - learn the name of the characters. They are called daughter or mother or grandmother. That is a deliberate choice on the part of Ms. Erpenbeck; in Shakespeare's words, "We are poor players who strut and fret our last hour on the stage." They could be any family. They could be us. A paraphrase of the title is used in the first book: "A day on which a life comes to end is still far from being the end of all days." Jenny Erpenbeck's book is cobbled together around Hegel's truism: "The truth is the whole." In each section, we see part of the truth: what may have happened, what happened from a certain character's perspective, what may not have happened at all. Only until we get to the end do we understand the importance of continuity: (to paraphrase the author), we carry within us a vast dark land, all the stories our mother never told us or that she hid from us...all the stories our mothers never heard of or never knew. In a lifetime, regimes rise and fall, people vanish or fade away, material goods find new owners. Yet life goes on.There is incredible beauty in the prose, translated to perfection by Susan Bernofsky, such as, "Her body is a city. Her heart is a large shady square, her fingers pedestrians, her hair the light of streetlamps, her knees two rows of buildings. She tries to give people footpaths..." From the almost folkloric or mythic feel of the first book to the more strident tone of the third to the achingly poignant tone of the final book, Ms. Erpenbeck flirts with the notion of possibility, fate, and death. She is an exciting writer who deserves the widest audience possible.

THE END OF THE DAYS uses a structure of five “books” and four intervening “intermezzos” to explore the possible fates of a particular red-haired female who is born in an Austrian village in 1902. Here, Book I begins at the grave of this female, whose mother (Jewish) and father (Austrian) are devastated by the crib death of their daughter. This death, the subsequent depression of the parents, and the fecklessness of the father then precipitate a series of choices that—spoiler alert!--eviscerate their marriage. But wait; the intermezzo after Book I posits that this baby does not die and that her intact family moves to Vienna in 1908, where the father works as a civil servant.Thereafter, the “books” in DAYS are told from the perspective of events in 1919, when the red-head, in Vienna, suffers from war-induced shortages, starvation, and outrage; in 1938, when this woman, a dedicated communist, has become a persona-non-grata in Moscow; in the 1970’s, when this same female, now gray-haired and heavy, lives as a prominent playwright and novelist in East Germany; and in 1992, when the woman, suffering from dementia, survives in an assisted-living center. Each of these “books” is driven by, or concludes with, a death. But then the “intermezzos”, which follow all but Book V, explore other possibilities. What if the frustrated teenager had discovered a new purpose in life? What if the woman enjoyed administrative luck in Russia and lived past The Great Terror? What if she paid closer attention as she descended the stairs?Using this structure in DAYS, Jenny Erpenbeck tells a series of persuasive death-haunted stories but then finds within each story another possibility and more time for her characters. This structure seems to argue that fate, when a person is alive, is the unpredictable outcome of coincidence, idealism, luck, carelessness, and deceit. At the same time, DAYS is emphatic about everyone’s eventual fate, which is that we all die.This gets a little complicated; but the grandmother of the red-haired woman raised her family without her husband, who died horrifically in a pogrom. In response to this murder, this woman is determined to create a path out of Jewish history—that is, assimilation—for her daughter and she strongly encourages the marriage of her daughter to the Austrian civil servant. Then, this daughter discourages her own daughters, one of them the red-haired woman, from having contact with their Jewish-looking granny, who still owns a menorah. So does assimilation work, in Erpenbeck’s view? Well, one of Granny’s granddaughters carries the diary of her dead sister as she marches to her annihilation in the Holocaust. And Granny’s great grandson, the son of the red-head, is oblivious to his heritage, which, in DAYS, is a form of both personal and ancestral obliteration. But either way, Granny’s assimilationist choice did not avert tragedy. And death is inescapable.THE END OF THE DAYS is a terrific novel, beautifully written, and is highly recommended.

This strange and beautiful -- and sad -- book explores the mutability of time and history, working through the horrors of twentieth century Europe. The structural device is simple: the author shuffles the cards at the moment when the central character dies, and examines the "what if" of choices made differently that would not have lead to the death. This starts with the death of a baby of a young Jewish woman in the Habsburg Empire -- the mother mourns, the husband leaves, but -- what if the baby hadn't died? Then, we move forward with the story of the undead baby, the unleaving husband, the contented wife, until the end of the War brings disaster to Vienna, and the grown up daughter dies a sort of suicide, but -- what if she hadn't despaired? And so on and so on. Some of the choices that push the character towards death or away from it are profound, others trivial in the extreme. The book ends with the character in an old age home, slipping towards a death that, this time, can't be shuffled away.This isn't a straight linear read, but the characters are alive, and one has the momentum of history to keep the pages turning. I thought it was beautifully written, and found the story touching. In some way, despite the sadness of so much of the story, it is tremendously life affirming: there is an extraordinary amount of detail about things and people, showing the richness, as well as the pathos, of life.

Absolutely brilliant. I couldn't put it down. Poignant. The book is however structured in a rather complex and not so easily accessible style: made up of 5 books, it spans in a compact manner European history from the beginning of the 20th century to contemporary times. Each book deals with one historical period of great political and social turmoil e.g. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Nazi regime, the Soviet era, East German decades and now after German reunification. It is a clever construction (perhaps too clever!) and deals with the question of "what if that (unamed) girl had survived that political /social upheaval to face the next one?".It is a book about the randomness of life events and the constant threat of death (whether due to your religious affiliation or hunger or suicide or political affiliation).Each book has a great sense of place whether it is Vienna, Moscow or Berlin. The book is multilayered and dense.It is also about the role and burden of identity. This story strikes an emotional nerve: it is heart-breaking to read about what a German Frau who has escaped death throughout the 20th century and is today in her 90s (demented and in a nursing home in Berlin) has experienced and endured in one single lifetime. With the loss of her mental faculties she has at last lost her identity. Perhaps this is what freedom is. Snow BeachSnow Beach

This complex novel explores some of the most painful episodes of the 20th century through characters whose survival is dependant on decisions and actions outwith their control. The question 'What if?' is never explicitly used, but it is implicit throughout the novel. Lives take different directions on the passing of a car, the positioning of a puddle or a pile of snow - but that is never to trivialise those lives. Written from an Eastern European perspective, it is a fascinating and emotional journey and essential reading for those of us who watched from the West.

Really enjoyed tis book. would have overlooked it before becauseof the cover but glad i tried it

Found this book hard going. Not my kind of book it seems to jump around too much.

She is one of the best authors writing today. This is a wonderful book.