The wall

Review by Choice Review

Austrian novelist Marlen Haushofer (1920-70) first published this novel in West Germany in 1962. Its appearance in English is welcome and long overdue. Reminiscent of Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes (1964), Haushofer's flawlessly controlled tale unfolds as a journal kept by a middle-aged widow who has been isolated in an Austrian forest by an invisible wall, presumably the work of some military superpower. All human life outside the wall has ceased as far as she knows, and her only companions now are a cat, a dog, and a pregnant cow. It is a novel rich in imaginative, original insight philosophical, ecological, feminist but all is resolved into pure story. Because the plot is not weighed down by programmatic messages or allegories, it poses a special and refreshing challenge to the imagination. Its language is vivid and engaging; even the translator's occasional slips do not significantly compromise the author's achievement. For college, university, and public libraries.-S. Dowden, Yale University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Austrian writer Haushofer's 1963 cult classic enters the mind of a nameless woman staying in a remote hunting lodge when an invisible wall inexplicably closes her off from a world that seems to have suddenly ended. Two and a half years later she decides to document her experiences, in hopes that someone might someday read it. Her detailed reportage feels utterly plausible, reminiscent of great memoirs of solitude, albeit a far more radical solitude than that of Thoreau or May Sarton. The mystery of her situation and the practical demands of survival gradually give place to the more profound challenge of grasping her selfhood, suddenly loosed from the roles, norms, and expectations of the patriarchy, capitalism, and all society whatsoever save that of a dog, a cow, a cat, and their offspring. Vivid and searching contemplations on the world around and within her draw readers to consider their own existence. This new edition features a perceptive afterword by Claire-Louise Bennett, author of the similarly ruminative Pond. VERDICT Haushofer's thought-provoking masterpiece stands as a touchstone for popular literary post-apocalypses by such authors as Emily St. John Mandel and Ling Ma and is certain to be a life-changing read for many.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A woman finds herself alone at a hunting cabin, cut off from the world by an invisible, impenetrable wall. In this translation of a 1963 German novel, an unnamed narrator is suddenly forced to fend for herself at a hunting lodge deep in the Austrian woods. She's isolated from all human contact by an invisible wall that appears overnight. "I shall set everything down as precisely as I can," she writes, recording her life for posterity, if there is one. She also writes to stay sane. "I'm not writing for the sheer joy of writing; so many things have happened to me that I must write if I am not to lose my reason." The wall, "this terrible, invisible thing," hems her in and forces her to rethink everything about her existence. Everyone beyond the wall appears to be dead. The woman begins by limiting her space and establishing a garden. Her story is a study in survival but also a study of being human. The woman is left with a cat, a cow, and a dog for companionship; these creatures create meaning by giving her something to do. Caregiving fills the days and makes them bearable. So do manual labor and the completion of tasks, which comfort her and "[bring] a bit of order into the huge, terrible disorder that had invaded [her] life." What is the wall? An allusion to the Cold War? An allegory for the Berlin Wall? Yes. But it also serves as a metaphorical stand-in for so many restrictions. It creates a situation that allows the main character and the reader to examine our ontology and what we think makes us real. Similarly, the main character has a sense that being read would give meaning to her words and, thus, her life: "I still hope someone will read this report…" she says, "my heart beats faster when I imagine human eyes resting on these lines, and human hands turning the pages." She isn't coy about the toll that the isolation and hard work take on her body, nor about her own inevitable demise. She considers the world before, but she doesn't mourn it. All that matters is the present. "I may be in a position," she says prophetically, "to murder time." Strangely relevant as we begin to reflect on our own experiences during the pandemic shutdown. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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I sat down on a tree-trunk at the side of the road and tried to think. I couldn't. It was as if all my thoughts had abandoned me all at once. Lynx crept closer, and his bloody saliva dripped on to my coat. I stroked him until he calmed down. And then we both looked over to the road, so quiet and glistening in the morning light. I stood up three more times and convinced myself that here, three yards from me, there really was something invisible, smooth and cool blocking my path. I thought it might be a hallucination, but of course I knew that it was nothing of the the kind. I could have coped much more easily with a momentary insanity than with this terrible, invisible thing. But there was Lynx with his bleeding mouth, and there was the bump on my head, which was begging to ache. I don't know how long I stayed sitting on the tree-trunk, but I remember my thoughts kept hovering around quit trivial matters, as if they wanted to keep away at all costs from this incomprehensible experience. The sun rose higher and warmed my back. Lynx licked and licked and finally stopped bleeding. He couldn't have hurt himself too badly. I realized I had to do something, and ordered Lynx to sit. Then I carefully approached the invisible obstruction with outstretched hands and felt my way along it until I bumped into the last rock of the gorge. I couldn't get any further on that side. On the other side of the road I got as far as the stream, and only now did I notice that the stream was slightly dammed and was flooding its banks. Yet it wasn't carrying that much water. It had been dry all April and the snow had already thawed. On the other side of the wall - I've grown used to calling the thing the wall, because I had to give it some name or other now that it was there - on the other side, then, the bed of the stream was almost dry, and then the water flowed on in a trickle. t had obviously burrowed its way through the porous limestone. So the wall couldn't extend deep into the earth. A fleeting relief flashed through me. I didn't want to cross the blocked stream. There was no reason to believe the wall suddenly stopped, because then it would have been easy for Hugo and Luise to get back. Suddenly I was struck by what might have been unconsciously worrying me the whole time: the fact that the road was entirely deserted. Someone would have raised the alarm ages ago. IT would have been natural for the villagers to gather inquisitively by the wall. Even if none of them had discovered the wall, Hugo and Luise would surely have bumped into it. The fact that there was not a single person to be seen struck me as even more puzzling than the wall. I began to shiver in the bright sunshine. The first little farmhouse, only a cottage, in fact, was just around the next corner. If I crossed the stream and climbed up the mountain pasture a little, I would be able to see it. I went back to Lynx and gave him a good talking to. He was very sensible, of course, and encouragement would have been much more appropriate. It was suddenly a great source of comfort to me that I had Lynx with me. I took off my shoes and socks and waded into the stream. On the other side the wall ran along the foot of the mountain pasture. At last I could see the cottage. It lay very still in the sunlight; a peaceful, familiar scene. A man stood by the spring, holding his right hand cupped halfway between the flowing water and his face. A clean old man. His braces hung around him like snakes, and he had rolled up his shirtsleeves. But his hand didn't get to his face. He wasn't moving at all. I closed my eyes and waited, then looked again. The clean old man still stood motionless. I now saw that his knees and his left hand were resting on the edge of the stone trough; perhaps that was what stopped him falling over. Beside the house there was a little garden in which herbs grew along with peonies and bleeding-hearts. There was also a thin, tousled lilac bush that had already faded. It had been almost summery that April, even up here in the mountains. In the city even the peonies had faded. No smoke rose from the chimney. I beat on the wall with my fist. It hurt a little, but nothing happened. And suddenly I no longer felt any desire to break down the wall separating me from the incomprehensible thing that had happened to the old man by the spring. Taking great care, I crossed the stream back to Lynx, who was sniffing at something and seemed to have forgotten his fear. It was a dead nuthatch, its head caved in and its breast flecked with blood. That nuthatch was the first in the long succession of little birds that met their deaths so pitifully one radiant May morning. For some reason I can never forget that nuthatch. While I was contemplating it, I noticed the plaintive cries of the birds. I must have been able to hear them for a long time before I was aware of them. All of a sudden, all I wanted was to leave that place and get back to the hunting-lodge, away from those pitiful cries and the tiny, blood-smeared corpses. Lynx too had grown worried again, and pressed himself whining against me. On the way back through the forge he stayed close by my side, and I spoke to him reassuringly. I can't remember what I said, it just seemed important to break the silence in the murky, damp gorge, where greenish light seeped through the beech-tree leaves and tiny streams trickled down from the bare rocks on my left. We were in a bad situation, Lynx and I, and at the time we didn't know how bad it was. But we weren't lost entirely, because there were two of us. Excerpted from The Wall by Marlen Haushofer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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