I discovered Peter Stamm through Caroline’s review of his short story collection, ‘In Strange Gardens and Other Stories’. When I thought of reading one of Stamm’s books for German Literature Month, I decided on ‘Unformed Landscape’, as the storyline of this book appealed to me very much. I finished reading it yesterday. Then I opened the book on the first page and re-read all my favourite passages again. And again. Here is what I think.
Kathrine is a Customs inspector in a coastal village in Norway. It is a village in Norway, but it is really a place where different people live. As one of the early pages in the book says :
Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway, up here they all looked alike. The borders were covered by snow, the snow joined everything up, and the darkness covered it over. The real borders were between day and night, between summer and winter, between the people.
Kathrine is married to a well-to-do man, Thomas, and has a son from an earlier marriage. On paper everything is hunky-dory. The only problem is that Kathrine’s husband tries to change his wife everyday. He imposes his lifestyle, values, interests, habits on her and at some point Kathrine feels that she is living not in her own house but in someone else’s house.
She had thought they were building something together, but it was just Thomas building her into his life, trying to mold her, to train her, until she suited him, and suited the type of life he planned to lead. Until her own apartment was as foreign to her as his parents’ house, as he was, and as the life she led with him.
Then one day things reach a flashpoint. Kathrine has a one-night stand with her childhood friend, Morten. When her husband and his family discover this, things turn unpleasant. Soon, Kathrine packs her bags and leaves her village, takes a ship and goes into the sea. She has read about all the wonderful places of the world in books like Jules Verne’s novels. Though she has never travelled south of the Arctic circle, ever in her life, now she wants to see some of these exotic places and have interesting adventures. But when she goes to one new place after another, meets new people from different countries, makes new friends, she is in for a surprise. Things are not what she imagined them to be. They are very different. But they are also not very different from the way things are in her coastal village.
Kathrine felt disappointed. So many years she had been dreaming of a trip to the South. She had supposed that everything would be different south of the Arctic Circle. She had pictured worlds to herself, wonderful, colorful worlds full of strange animals and people as in the books of Jules Verne she had liked so much as a child. Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But this world wasn’t very different from the world of home. Everything was bigger and noisier, there were more people around, more cars on the streets. But she had hardly seen anything that she hadn’t seen at home or in Tromso. There’s not a lot of room in a person, she thought.
She had seen so much in the last two weeks, so much that she had never seen before, and yet she had the feeling she hadn’t seen anything at all. That people had different faces, she had already known. She had known that there are some houses that are bigger and more beautiful than others. A thousand times a thousand makes a million, and it wasn’t necessary to go to Paris to find that out.
Kathrine meets one her old friends Christian, in Paris. They spend some time together. Then Christian has to leave. Now, Kathrine has to decide what she wants to do with her life. Should she go back to her old life – her husband who doesn’t care about her feelings, her son, her old job? Or should she go back to her old village and see whether there are still sparks in her relationship with Morten? Or should she start a new life in one of the new places that she is visiting? What Kathrine decides on and what happens after that form the rest of the story.
‘Unformed Landscape’ is a beautiful, slim book. I liked it very much, starting from the title, to the name of the heroine (I have seen it spelled Catherine, Catharine, Katherine, Katharine and Kathryn, but this is the first time I have seen it spelled Kathrine – how many variations exist in one name!), to the beautiful prose of Peter Stamm, to the beautiful evocation of the Norwegian landscape, to the beautiful passages which come throughout the book. Even the last sentences of the book – ‘It was fall, then winter. It was summer. It got dark, and then it got light again’ – said many things. Peter Stamm’s spare prose was perfect. (I really tacked in this sentence here, so that I could use the phrase ‘spare prose’ 🙂 By the way, is it ‘spare prose’ or should it be ‘sparse prose’? Is there a difference between both the phrases? What do you think?) I was dreading that there will be an unpleasant surprise in the end, like some of my favourite authors had done before – like Muriel Barbery does in ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ and E.L.Swann does in ‘Night Gardening’. Fortunately, Stamm doesn’t do that. The ending is nice and elegant, even if it has a predictable element to it. I liked most of the characters in the story – the people who live in the village and the people whom Kathrine encounters during her travels. Even her husband Thomas has some redeeming qualities, though I didn’t like him much.
After reading ‘Unformed Landscape’ I thought about it. Or rather I thought about one aspect of it. The writer Peter Stamm is Swiss, but most of the story is set in Norway and the main characters are Norwegian. In a sense it is a Norwegian novel. But it wouldn’t be classified under Norwegian literature. It would be classified under Swiss literature and under German literature, because it was written in German. I thought of other books which were similar. I could think of Patrick Süskind’s ‘Perfume’ and ‘The Pigeon’ (the novelist is German, the books are written in German, but all the characters are French and the story happens in France) and Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’ (the author is Indian, the book is written in English, all the characters are English and the story happens in England). We normally see this happening in historical novels and in detective novels (like Alexander McCall Smith’s No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series), but it is interesting that this is happening in literary fiction too. What do you think about this?
‘Unformed Landscape’ is one of my favourite reads of German Literature Month. Its potential competitors for the top spot might be Herta Müller’s ‘The Land of Green Plums’ and Bernhard Schlink’s ‘The Reader’. It is also one of my favourite reads of the year. I want to read all of Stamm’s books now. It is nice that he doesn’t write chunksters. I want to read his book ‘Seven Years’ next.
I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.
The Music
The music in the bar was lovely. There was something glassy about it, and the rhythm seemed to fit with Kathrine’s heartbeat, her breathing, which kept accelerating. She made herself breathe more slowly, and before long she had the feeling she was only breathing out, or in and out simultaneously. It was as though she’d left the room, and was passing through a landscape, hovering over a landscape of sounds. When she shut her eyes, she saw brightly colored patterns that opened out like delicate fans or flowers. The patterns were yellow and purple and hemmed with black lines. They looked like gentle hills. It was beautiful, and Kathrine felt at ease.
Laughing alone
Kathrine laughed, and was surprised at the sound of her laughter in the quiet apartment. It wasn’t her laugh at all. She laughed to hear herself laughing. Strange, she thought, that you cry alone, but never laugh. I’ve never laughed alone before.
Marriage
“Is your wife competent?”
“Very. Our marriage works best when I’m away. Then she can do whatever she wants.”
“And when you’re there, then she does whatever you want, is that it?”
“Then I do what she wants.”
Being bored
She had never been bored, even though her life was monotonous, even though nothing happened in the village. Her favorite days had been the ones where everything was exactly as always. Only Sundays had sometimes bothered her.
On Faith
She didn’t believe in God. Almost no one in the village believed in God, perhaps not even the vicar, who was a nice man, and did his job same as everyone else.
***
“The people here believe in God, they just don’t believe in Jesus,” Ian said once, “they believe in the Creation, but they don’t believe in love.”
“Well, Creation exists,” said Kathrine, “whereas love…”
***
Kathrine didn’t believe what the minister was saying, and yet his words were comforting to her. Perhaps it was enough if he believed it, or Alexander’s wife believed it, or Ian or Svanhild. Perhaps it was enough if the minister just spoke the words. Perhaps it was enough that they were all assembled here, that they were thinking of Alexander, that they would remember him later, and this day and this hour.
You can find Tony’s review of the book here and Amy’s review of the book here.
Have you read Peter Stamm’s ‘Unformed Landscape’? What do you think about it?
Glad you liked it Vishy 🙂 I’m just waiting for another Stamm book to drop through my letter box any day now…
It was a really wonderful book, Tony. Which Stamm book are you waiting for? 🙂 I ordered ‘Seven Years’ and I hope it will arrive in the next few days. Can’t wait to read it!
Mine is ‘An einem Tag wie diesem’ (‘On a Day Like This’?), which is supposed to be one of his best 🙂
That is wonderful, Tony! Happy reading! Will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. I just started Stamm’s ‘Seven Years’ and am liking it till now. I haven’t read your review of it yet – will read it after I finish the book.
Lovely review, Vishy. I’m looking forward to reading it.
He has been criticized for writing “non-Swiss” novels but I find it is quite typical for Swiss writers. Pascal Mercier is another example, I suppose.
Swiss writers either write about Switzerland, its landscape and are deeply rooted in it or, they are very cosmopolitan writers. It could be because it is a country with four official languages which correspond to four different cultures. Swiss people love travelling, most of my best friends lived abroad for many years. Some say because the country is so small and narrow.
Thanks Caroline 🙂 Hope you like it too. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it 🙂 It is interesting that Stamm has been criticized for writing ‘non-Swiss’ novels. It is interesting to know about the topics that Swiss writers explore in their books. I totally forgot Pascal Mercier – ‘Night Train in Lisbon’ had mostly Portuguese characters though the main character was Swiss. I never thought about this element of books till I read Patrick Süskind’s book and now Peter Stamm’s book. I think it is nice in a way that the language in which a book is written is dissociated culturally from the story which a book tells because I feel that this probably creates the freedom for the writer to explore universal themes affecting all of humanity. Stamm needs to be congratulated for that. I have ordered Stamm’s ‘Seven Years’ now and I can’t wait to read it.
I forgot to write about one more thing. Your description of Switzerland – four official languages, four different cultures, love for travel, cosmopolitan writers – sounds so awesome! I would love to read more Swiss literature 🙂
Hi Vishy, I quite enjoyed your review – it sounds like the kind of book I would like and I am curious as to what did Kathrine choose in the end. I can see why you liked it – the big question the character has to face, haven’t we all been there at some point? I liked the quote on marriage – a bit cynical but funny
Glad to know that, Delia. Hope you get to read this book and like it. Will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. Kathrine is one of my favourite literary heroines of recent times and I really loved this book. I am hoping to read more of Stamm’s books.
I forgot to refer to your spare vs sparse prose question.
“Spare” implies merely a falling short of what is easily or fully sufficient. “Sparse” stresses a lack of normal or desirable thickness or density. The term need not suggest insufficiency or inadequacy in numbers or in quantity but it always connotes a thin scattering of the units. Spare & sparse are comparable when they mean so small (as in amount, number or size) as to fall short of what is normal, necessary or desirable (definitions from the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary).
I have always seen the term “spare prose” – a kind of writing unburdened by flourishes and other literary embellishments and not “sparse prose”. Think Hemingway, he is famous for his spare writing style.
Sparse has a more negative connotation – think of “sparse hair”, someone who’s on the way to going bald.
Thanks for the explanation, Delia. It was very insightful. Though at some level there seems to be a similarity between ‘spare’ and ‘sparse’ the finer details are different. I will use ‘spare’ now, whenever I want to refer to prose.
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I have to admit I was confused as to the setting was in Norway, but then I remembered that just because a book is a German book doesn’t mean it has to be about the same country–or Switzerland in this instance. I may take your recommendation and see if the library has this book for German Lit month. Sounds like a book i would love.
That was an interesting aspect of the book, TBM. The writer is Swiss, the book is written in German, but the setting is Norway and most of the characters are Norwegian and the point of view is Norwegian 🙂 I hope you get to read this beautiful book and like it. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
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