Isabel Allende: A Long Petal of the Sea, Ballentine Books/Penguin Random House USA, 9780593158425, Trade Paperback,

German Edition: Dieser weite Weg,  Suhrkamp Verlag, Hardcover

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite Latin American storytellers ever since I read her famous „The House of Spirits“.  A few years ago her novels no longer held me captured as they used to and I read her more infrequently. She now has my full attention again; her latest novel “A long Petal of the Sea” was an absolute pleasure to read, written in the best tradition of Latin American storytelling.   Allende spins a captivating yarn combining historical facts of the Spanish Civil war in the 1930ties weaving them into  a love and family saga which ends in Latin America. The subject at the heart of the novel, the importance of home for wellbeing, is a very timely one, with hundred thousand fleeing their countries currently for a multitude of reasons, reminiscent of the masses that fled Europe during the 1930/40ties because of their Jewish heritage or political convictions.

Victor Dalmau comes from a family fighting Franco’s Fascists, he treating the wounded as an army doctor in the field. Among the thousands fleeing Spain over the treacherous mountains into France is Roser, a gifted pianist and the lover of his brother Gillem, pregnant with their child. In order to survive, Victor and Roser decide to enter into a marriage of convenience after it becomes clear that Gillem is dead and the only way they could gain passage on the SS Winnipeg to start a new life in Chile is as a married couple particularly since Roser is heavily pregnant.  I was completely unaware of the fact that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had actually chartered such a ship in 1939, the SS Winnipeg, gathering a total of two thousand refugees transporting them to a safe new life in Chile.  Allende uses these two richly drawn protagonists to describe the atrocities of the Spanish Civil war period, the ensuing hard years in Chile and Venezuela with all their political upheaval and the effect on the destiny of the Dalmau family.  Her vivid imagination and her own life experiences created a fascinating tale of love, family, and the power of belief, endurance and hope.

I loved this uplifting, compassionate saga, Roser and Victor felt like family, I was sad when their story ended after 314 pages – Allende at her best!

Irvin D. Yalom: When Nietzsche wept, 9780062009302, Harper Perennial Modern Classics,

German Edition: Und Nietzsche weinte, btb Taschenbuch

In my opinion, Irvin Yalom is one of the wisest thinkers and friend to mankind, a psychotherapist one hopes to encounter when in troubled waters. His work as an author spans from reflections on his long time experience as a therapist to novels. One of my favorite pieces of his work is a film called “Yalow’s cure” (Anleitung zum Glücklichsein in German). He has a unique gift of passing on invaluable philosophical knowledge and advice about life’s perils and how to become closer to happiness based on his own life experience and that of his patients. The film is superior to anything I have seen available on the subject matter. 

I have read several of his books and am currently reading "Staring at the sun"  but “When Nietzsche wept” has been on my “Want to read list” for quite some time. I finally bought a second hand copy in Austin/Texas and read it over months alongside other novels. 

It is a fascinating imagined account of an encounter in 1882 by two great men that actually never happened but nearly did: Friedrich Nietzsche, the tormented philosopher and Dr. Josef Breuer,a famous Viennese physician who today is regarded as the originator of the talking cure, eventually introduced by his friend Sigmund Freud, then a young doctor he had regular intellectual exchanges with. When Dr. Breuer agrees to treat Friedrich Nietzsche, who had been plagued by terrible, debilitating migraine headaches almost his entire life using his “talking cure”, both men have no idea that the exchange between doctor and patient will eventually be reversed over the months they regularly meet. Breuer himself is plagued by inner demons and marriage problems and finds great comfort in their philosophical, often painful yet healing exchanges. Yalom blends fiction with acknowledged facts creating a powerful novel prompting the reader to reflect on one’s own life experiences. 

If you are interested in philosophy or psychology, this is a wonderful, thought provoking novel I loved reading.  

Alex Michaelides: The Silent Patient, Orion Publishing, 9781409181620, paperback
German Edition: Alex Michaelides:  Die stumme Patientin, paperback, Droemer Knaur

“The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides was a record selling thriller in 2019, a New York and Sunday Times bestseller  with  rights sold into 39 countries world- wide as well as film rights. This means I started reading my first book of 2020 with very high expectations indeed.

The story of this psychological mystery sounded very promising and compelling: a successful painter, Alicia Berenson, is convicted of having shot her beloved husband five times and has refused to speak ever since concealing what led to her actions.  All efforts by psychologists at the clinic where she is kept have been in vain; she remains silent and even became violent at times. Enter Theo Faber, a psychotherapist who has become obsessed with the case, convinced he can treat Alicia and bring her back to the real world. He is even prepared to give up a promising position in another clinic just to be able to treat her as his patient.  Being a happily married man himself he is totally puzzled why Alicia should have killed the man that had given her all the love and stability she had graved for….. 

This is where I will stop talking about the plot which is a very engaging,a slowly building one with a clever twist towards the end. But despite staying interested and wanting  this book to grab me, it never really did for whatever reason, be it that I have read zillion thrillers and mysteries over the years working in publishing which is perhaps why I am a little demanding or that the development felt  a bit too constructed towards the end for my taste.  It is a very clever plot now doubt and I can see why the story appealed  to so many readers as it clearly did; I was just not one of them. ….