WOMEN IN A RIVER LANDSCAPE: A Novel in Dialogues and Soliloquies

The wives and mistresses of modern German bankers and politicians grow tired of being merely ornaments in their men's eyes

Dialogues and soliloquies make up this last novel by German Nobel laureate Boll (Group Portrait with Lady, The Safety Net), who died in 1985. It opens on a breakfast scene between Erika and her maid Katharina, who exchange dangerous confidences about politics and adultery on the morning of a memorial mass for a murdered official. The thoughts and utterances of the numerous characters reflect a skewed, madhouse reality and seem often to rise from their uncensored fears and nightmares. Men and women openly discuss their sexual liaisons, their criminal machinations, their oddities (Karl chops up grand pianos that Mozart played). Ranging from their 30s to their 70s, these people are ministers, ecclesiastics and financiers in contemporary Bonn, with their wives, ex-wives and mistresses. Boll treats his female characters with compassion. Elisabeth is confined to a rest home for political wives who know too much, where they are given therapists and gigolos. Eva considers walking into the Rhine to her death, as her mother-in-law did before her. The river, seen from villas, gardens and bedrooms becomes a symbol of past greatness and depravity, holding the fabled Rhinegold as well as broken Nazi helmets. This is Boll's indictment of present-day Germany, which he sees as infected with post-Nazi corruption and malaise.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This cynical novel, adroitly composed of dialogues and soliloquies that explore the depth of Germany's "metaphysical rigor," boils with post-war Germany's corruption; no more chilling portrait of political machinations is imaginable. But politicians as pawns aren't the true focus; Boll concentrates on the power-brokers and ex-Nazis behind the scenes, those for whom politics is "just a game, a profession, a business." Central characters Herman and Erika Wubler reveal their own troubled characters while reacting strongly to the economic, religious, and political forces working against them. Boll's final work, this unrelenting novel consummates the themes of his later writing; highly recommended. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.