The Crooked Maid: A Novel - Hardcover

Vyleta, Dan

3.54

1,067 ratings by Goodreads

9781608198092: The Crooked Maid: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160819809X ISBN 13: 9781608198092

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2013

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Vienna, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the rubble.

Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier after discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerland is 18-year-old Robert Seidel, a schoolboy summoned home to his stepfather's sickbed and the secrets of his family's past.

As Anna and Robert navigate an unrecognizable city, they cross paths with a war-widowed American journalist, a hunchbacked young servant girl, and a former POW whose primary purpose is to survive by any means and to forget. Meanwhile, in the shells of burned-out houses and beneath the bombed-out ruins, a ghost of a man, his head wrapped in a red scarf, battles demons from his past and hides from a future deeply uncertain for all.

In The Crooked Maid, Dan Vyleta returns to the shadows of war-darkened Vienna, proving himself once again "a magical storyteller, master of the macabre" (David Park).

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About the Author:

Dan Vyleta is the son of Czech refugees who emigrated to Germany in the late 1960s. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. His previous novels are Pavel & I and The Quiet Twin. Vyleta is a Canadian citizen and lives in Wisconsin. www.danvyleta.com

From Booklist:

Novels about post-WWII Europe offer fascinating possibilities. Political lines are being redrawn, societies are rebuilding from the rubble, and chickens are coming home to roost. The Crooked Maid focuses on a group of characters converging on Vienna after a long absence. Anton Beer is headed home after years in a Russian POW camp. His estranged wife, Anna, is coming from Paris to meet him. The young man Robert, who shares Anna’s train, is coming home after his stepfather has fallen—or been pushed—from a high window. These and many other characters are drawn together at the trial of Robert’s stepbrother, accused of pushing his father, and by the search for Anton, who has gone missing. The novel has some trappings of a murder mystery but is more of a psychological novel, as the characters—from the eponymous crippled maid to the war-enriched matriarch—try to ferret out the truth from others while guarding their own secrets. This novel conjures up the stifling atmosphere of shame and deception of the postwar period and hints at escape through Vienna’s own “talking cure”—openness and honesty. --Lynn Weber

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