The End of Days

Starred review from September 29, 2014
This beautiful and ambitious novel by German writer Erpenbeck (Visitation) explores the many paths life can take. A baby girl dies accidentally in a small Eastern European town during the early years of the 20th century, spinning her family into disarray. But what if she had survived? Divided into five sections, each of which imagines a possible endpoint for the nameless female protagonist, the book begins with her death as an infant in Galicia, in the Hapsburg Empire, and spans nearly a century. The second section finds the teen girl living in wartime Vienna, hungry and rebellious. Her fate will hinge on an anguished stranger whom she meets after a heartbreak of her own. In the third section, she has left Vienna for Moscow, where she is an impassioned Communist worrying about her husband’s arrest and fighting to secure her own place within the party. The story concludes with two more possibilities for her as she continues life in Russia and Berlin. Erpenbeck’s graceful prose suits the understated tone of this Hans Fallada Prize winner, whose historical and political breadth could be stretched to unbelievability in less dextrous hands. The novel elegantly frames our human instinct to reimagine endings and tragedies as barely remembered moments over the course of a lifetime.

December 1, 2014

In the Hapsburg Empire, a newborn baby dies suddenly, leaving her parents to grieve into eternity. But what if fate had taken a different turn? Perhaps she survives and grows up in Vienna? Over the years, she faces death again and again, only to live on in another place and time. Her journey traces the history of war, of religious and political conflict that comes to define eastern Europe in the 20th century. Erpenbeck's ambitious novel (following Visitation) features an experimental, nonlinear arc. The depiction of minutiae, such as the freezing cold during times of deprivation and the frisson of longing that might come with the mere touch of a hand, provide the tiny stitches that connect the wandering story line. Like falling dominoes, each moment may have a long-term effect that reaches into lives unknown. In the end, it seems, no one can truly run away from grief. VERDICT Entrenched in the history of eastern Europe, and recalling Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, this novel shows how the vagaries of time and place influence the smallest of lives in unpredictable ways. For readers who appreciate an imaginative tour through political and social history.--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

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