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What Members Thought

Janet
Jul 23, 2013 rated it it was ok
Goethe wrote this when he was 24, just out of boyhood. The prose is beautiful, but the sentiments read like they come from a 13 or 14 year old... very immature, very self absorbed, as that age is. Yes, it was 1773 and people had not been exposed to romanticism. The book caused numerous copycat suicides, and still could in the wrong hands. I wonder how Goethe felt about this work in his later years. I would be embarrassed. For me, this classic was intolerably boring and annoying.
Dree
Wow. I do not even know where to start with this.

Yes, there are spoilers. Beware!

Werther is, in so many words, a stalker.

Mourning the death of a young woman (girlfriend? arranged match?), he falls for an engaged woman, Charlotte. He stays at her house as invited, ingratiates himself to her father (a family friend?) and young siblings. Her mother is deceased, she has no female guidance.

She marries. He hangs about. Her husband tolerates him. Makes polite upper-class efforts to get him to go away.
...more
Dianna
Sep 07, 2007 rated it liked it
Nanosynergy
Mar 10, 2009 marked it as to-read
Rosemary
Jan 11, 2011 rated it it was ok
Shelves: 1001-books
Ole
May 16, 2011 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: germany, 1001-books
Skye Jones
Oct 12, 2013 marked it as to-read
Shelves: 1001-import
Kristen
Jan 23, 2014 marked it as to-read
Shelves: personal-library
J_BlueFlower
Feb 17, 2014 marked it as looks-interesting
Tim Hickman
May 13, 2014 rated it really liked it
Sorobai
Dec 26, 2018 rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
Charisma
Mar 14, 2016 marked it as to-read
Elena
Mar 22, 2016 marked it as to-read  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: in-translation, own
Haaze
Oct 30, 2016 marked it as to-read
Kai Coates
Dec 05, 2017 marked it as to-read
Kristel
Feb 17, 2018 marked it as wishlist
Shelves: 1001-books
Andre Mitchell
Jul 25, 2018 marked it as to-read
Sorobai
Aug 24, 2018 marked it as to-read
Shelves: 1001
Alec
Oct 01, 2023 rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: 1001-read, 1001-total
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