A swirl of complicated characters and plot turns makes this a rewarding if sometimes demanding read.
Evocative novel of manners set in the 1920s Vienna of the shattered Habsburg Empire, originally published in 1951 and now translated into English for the first time.
“Much is now past and gone, to our dismay / And beauty shows the frailest power to stay.” So writes von Doderer in a poem that opens his sprawling novel—and that adorns the actual Strudlhof Steps, as central to Vienna as the Spanish Steps are to Rome. The protagonist is a former lieutenant named Melzer who might have been happier being a brewer—nomen est omen, writes von Doderer, the name is a sign, Melz being German for malt—than as a soldier tucked away in the Balkans. Returning to Vienna, Melzer falls into a circle of shattered souls: From the first sentence, we know that one woman is going to walk into a streetcar and lose one of her legs. Others chase after chimerical affairs, still others die by suicide. Melzer becomes increasingly entranced by those belle epoque steps, walking them, sitting at their feet, a passive observer of his own life. Von Doderer’s novel is both neurasthenic and darkly humorous, with some fine philosophical passages: “So it is that the organic fluidity of our physical existence will always detour around schemes hatched by every conclusive, now-and-forever organizer or visionary, implementation-to-the-last-detail politico, whose ambitions would long since…have brought the world to a standstill.” He is foreshadowing the rise of a different politics, one that, though only hinted at, will find Melzer on the Russian front in another couple of decades. Von Doderer himself was a member of the Nazi Party, and while he became disillusioned while serving in the Wehrmacht, there are a few uncomfortable passages that reveal a sometimes-disapproving fascination with the many non-German peoples who inhabited Vienna: the Romanians and Bulgarians with “their fondness for always living in the choicest residential neighborhoods,” for instance. Still, von Doderer ably captures a lost world in a book that belongs alongside the works of Stefan Zweig and Karl Kraus.
A swirl of complicated characters and plot turns makes this a rewarding if sometimes demanding read.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68137-527-4
Page Count: 872
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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