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Irretrievable



Publication Date: February 15, 2011
Pages: 288
Afterword by Phillip Lopate.
Translated from the German by Douglas Parmée.
Originally published in 1891.

Opposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, the appealing married couple at the center of this engrossing book by one of Germany’s greatest novelists, could not be less alike. Christine is a serious soul from a devout background. She is brooding and beautiful and devoted to her husband and their two children. Helmut is lighthearted and pleasure-loving and largely content to defer to his wife’s deeper feelings and better wisdom. They live in a beautiful large house overlooking the sea, which they built themselves, and have been happily married for twenty-three years—only of late a certain tension has crept into their dealings with each other. Little jokes, casual endearments, long-meditated plans: they all hit a raw nerve.

How a couple can slowly drift apart, until one day they find themselves in a situation which is nothing they ever wished for but from which they cannot go back, is at the heart of this timeless story of everyday life. Theodor Fontane’s great gift is to tell the story effectively in his characters� own words, listening to how they talk and fail to talk to each other, watching them turn away from their own true feelings as much as from each other. Irretrievable is a nuanced, affectionate, enormously sophisticated, and profoundly humane reckoning with the blindness of love.

I'd like to read this, having read Effi Briest.

We are going to be doing a podcast on this one around the beginning of next year. I'm looking forward to it!

After struggling for 200 pages, I absolutely loved the last 50. My brother had a similar experience, saying that the last 50 redeem the first 200 -- meaning, suddenly the first 200 are great, the slog makes sense, etc. I'm not sure when we'll get our podcast episode recorded, but if anyone else has read this, I'd love to hear your thoughts.