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Rating: 3 stars

"Yes" refers to the response given to this question, "Will you kill yourself one day?". The book is made up predominantly of ranting by a depressed and mentally deteriorating man living in rural Austria. He fantasizes about suicide, but never brings himself to do it. A new couple move in nearby. He finds a new purpose, but not necessarily a good one.

Yet another book that throws out all conventions of grammar and syntax. The first sentence is almost 500 words long. No paragraph separations, either. I am getting used to that with all of the similar 1001 books I have read lately. Aside from this, it was a well-written book. None of the characters had names. I can live with that, too. What really annoyed me was how he referred to the newcomers as "the Swiss couple" and the wife of this pair as "the Persian woman". This got very repetitive after the 200th or so time of using these monikers.

I have now read quite a few of the Bernhard books on the list. This one is one of the easiest to read in that one gets over the repeated emotions and phrasing, lack of paragraphs etc. quickly and after that you just go with it, unlike Extinction where the architectural constructs of the book drag the reader through endless painful repetitions.
The themes are also smaller and simpler than some of the others which focus on national character, loyalty and duty to oneself versus culture. The primary theme of "Yes" is that of isolation and how humans can not function without interaction with others and yet, humans also can only take so much human interaction. Each individual has a different tolerance and a different fulcrum to balance the two. Our main character believes he doesn't want interaction but when a new couple shows up in the neighborhood he believes this new "Persian woman" and his walks and talks with her, saves him from madness. Ultimately however, no one is truly saved, the "Persian woman" least of all. I gave it 3 stars because it is one of Bernhard's lesser books but I actually rather enjoyed it on the level of a 4.