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In his first novel, Couplings, Schneider turns his sharp eyes on the difficulties of love in the peculiar construct that was preunification Berlin. Eduard, a molecular biologist living in West Berlin, keeps a notebook entitled "A Concise Treatise on the Average Half-life of Love Relationships". The data he collects in it support only one conclusion: a strain of separation virus is raging in the walled city. "An initial rough estimate suggested that any given relationship had a maximum average life expectancy of three years, one hundred and sixty seven days, and two hours". With his friends Andre, an international composer, and Theo, a writer from East Berlin, Eduard makes a pact to fight the "dragon of separation" that seems to reign in Berlin. The man who fails to show up in a year with his current partner will finance an entire ski vacation for six people. Eduard vows to father six children with Klara; Andre, to marry Esther; and Theo, to have no connubial contact with his wife, Pauline. Of course nothing turns out as expected in this surprising and witty look at how the generation that came of age and rebelled in the sixties is coping with love and commitment.

"...Mr. Schneider gets the mix of comedy and melancholy just right....This nostalgic look at love in divided Berlin is a sly political parable. It celebrates the roles of chance....The book's very title hints at the mixed blessings of German reunification."

Suzanne Ruta, New York Times Book Review, 10/22/1996

"[A] polished, sardonic view of life and love in Berlin shortly before unification, as a biologist and his artistic friends probe the boundaries between commitment and liberation....Much more than a witty chronicle of the ins and outs of romance in Berlin, Schneider's debut conveys, from a distinctly male perspective, a feeling for the complex ambience of the once divided city, where pride and guilt mingle to curious effect..."

Kirkus, 08/01/1996

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