We would have told each other everything A novel

In this deeply affecting English-language debut, German writer Hermann reflects on the connections between art and experience, delving into her protagonist's family history in West Germany and the relationships that shaped her life. In part one, set shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic, Judith, a writer, is ending a night out in Berlin when she runs into her erstwhile psychoanalyst, Dr. Dreehüs. The encounter prompts Judith to remember Ada, an old friend who had recommended the analyst to her; and Marco, another friend, who died young. Ada was determined to overcome her own traumatic past, and for an idyllic period in the 1990s, when the trio were in their 20s and 30s, Marco and Judith become part of Ada's "chosen family... made up of her husband, her child, and a close circle of other women and men." Judith continues her reflections in the second part, remembering her childhood in the 1970s and her father's time in a mental hospital in the '90s. In the third and final part, she visits her parents in fall 2020, and develops a new understanding of her family's dynamics. Interspersed with these events are thoughts on writing: Judith insists, "It doesn't matter whether a story is invented, true, or only half-true." Despite proceeding by association and ranging freely between past and present, the work is tightly and satisfyingly unified by the depth and intelligence of the narration. Readers are fortunate to have this remarkable meditation on family, identity, and writing from a master storyteller. (Jan.)

Two years after she stopped going to therapy, the narrator of Hermann's (Alice) tripartite literary novel runs into her former psychoanalyst in the middle of the night, outside a bar in Berlin. Even after a decade on his couch, she knows little about the psychoanalyst. As the doctor and former patient reconnect, Hermann selectively discloses stories from the narrator's past--relationships with close friends that did not endure, and traumatic episodes with her father, who spent years in a psychiatric hospital. As the narrator looks back on her past, she connects her memory archive with the present moment and compares the pivotal line of a story to a matryoshka doll, which both reveals and conceals. This psychological novel is concerned with memory, the act of writing, keeping secrets, and the intersection of dreams and reality. Moving in a nonlinear fashion, Hermann's book also touches on the weight of Germany's history on subsequent generations and the act of forming found family to replace a disappointing biological one. VERDICT In this work of autofiction, first presented as a trio of essays at the prestigious Frankfurt Poetics Lectures, Hermann conducts a symphony in the mechanics of writing, deftly choosing what elements of the story to share and what to omit.--Jacqueline Snider