The Post-Office Girl (New York Review Books Classics)

I only review a fraction of the number of books I read, so I don't give this compliment lightly. Summary, no spoilers: Let me start off by saying that it is difficult to give a good review of this book without slight spoilers - but I will do my best and try to still give a flavor of what makes this such a memorable read. This *gorgeously* written novel starts off with a brilliant description of a desolate country post office in Austria, in 1926. Working in this depressing bureaucratic hell, is a 28 year old woman named Christine, who has been beaten down by poverty, dullness and tedium in her life. Christine had a much different childhood; her family had substantial means and lived comfortably, and she grew up a happy and content child. But all changed with the Great War, and they, like so many other Europeans, lost everything. All that remains to Christine is her job with the post office, and taking care of her sick mother in a depressing and decrepit attic room. She is devoid of hope, and that is part of the key to this fantastic story. While toiling at the post office, Christine gets a telegraph message from her aunt in America - a woman she's never met. The wealthy aunt offers her a vacation at an expensive and elegant Alpine resort. Christine immediately runs to her mother to find out if this is real, and her mother explains that it is, and that her sister (the aunt) wanted her to go, but that she couldn't because she couldn't travel and that she should take Christine. Christine, utterly flummoxed by the thought of any change in the dull routine of her life, packs her small straw suitcase, and takes a train to meet her aunt. The description of Christine's arrival at the hotel are priceless and brilliant. Christine is overwhelmed by the beauty and by the elegance of everything, and she is like Cinderella at the ball. Her aunt (and uncle) are good to her, and dress her in beautiful clothing and have her hair cut in the latest elegant fashion, and have her face made-up. The scene reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie - being primped and taken care of from every angle. Christine is so excited, and so astounded at her ability to feel anything but sadness and tedium, that she cannot sleep for the first night. She feels like her eyes have been opened to the beauty of the world, and she wants to take it all in. This is all from Part One, of this two part novel. If you want absolutely no spoilers, don't read on (and don't read the back cover of the novel) - although I recommend that you do and that it won't take away from your enjoyment of this novel. For me, knowing a little bit in advance only enhanced my reading experience. Part Two is a far different story, although it takes place immediately afterwards. Christine, like Cinderella, has been returned to the hovel, but now it all becomes unbearable because she has experienced and seen the other side. Christine befriends a man named Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran, who shares her world-view and despondency. They try to see each other and have a relationship, but this is not easy in post-war Austria, when one doesn't have any money or means. But they make plans... There are so many things to love about this book - number one being that it's just so beautifully written. There are paragraphs that I read over and over again, just because of Zweig's ability to string words together to get across a feeling or an idea or a description are just so perfect. And yet this is a translation, to boot! It makes me want to learn German, just so I could read this in its native language. Secondly, this is an astute novel about what it's like to live without hope, and what happens when someone who has nothing is given this chance to see what the good life is like, and then have it taken away from them. Is it better not to have been given this chance at all? Needless to say, this novel is highly recommended. I also highly recommend another NYRB Classic release, "Beware of Pity", Zweig's first novel released under this label. He is fast becoming my favorite author, and I hope that all of his books and stories become available in English. Sadly, he and his wife committed suicide in 1942 in Brazil, haunted by what was happening in his native Austria and Germany.

In The Post-Office Girl (New York Review Books Classics) the reader is taken on a journey with Cinderella, albeit one drenched in the reality of Austria sandwiched between the Great War and the Nazi uprisings of the 1930's. Stefan Zweig's twist also gives us a part II. What might happen the night after when things don't go well? Zweig didn't start with "Once upon a time" and he won't end with "they lived happily ever after". Thus an interesting story is born. Christine is described as young girl but really a woman (28 years), from a prosperous happy family in the pre-War Austro-Hungarian empire who slides into wartime destitution and finally just part of the mass of post war working poor. Suddenly she is touched by great wealth and given a chance to let her beauty and charm flow out and be recognized only to suddenly crash back to reality. Zweig creates a family history around Christine including a rich Aunt back in Europe from America many years after leaving for her own potentially scandalous reasons. Christine's aunt invites her on holiday in Switzerland and her first taste of luxury. Fancy dresses, lofty conversation, new relationships, friendships and potential romance all collide transforming Christine from a tired, plain postal worker into literally the prettiest princess. In Zweig's tale "midnight" comes when Christine's aunt fears for her own position in society and sends Christine physically and emotionally careening back to her drab, nearly hopeless life. At that point Part II begins. How Christine handles the crushing reality of everyday life having seen how the other half lives was more interesting to me. Perhaps because we all know something of Cinderella the second part of the book lent itself to a more unpredictable and provocative path where Christine is increasingly embittered each time she senses a better life might be lead than her own. Zweig is said to have written the story in 2 parts and years apart. I think he was less convincing in part I, I found his early portrait of Christine less convincing on how she how transforms into a giddy silly girl drunk on her new place in society. Maybe making her 28 was a too old for me to buy into one so easily changing identity but in the second part I saw a person that could hold and cultivate anger, self absorption and depression. It seemed credible and attention grabbing. The story seemed to speed up. Her new relationships - more accommodations then friendships act to reinforce her own feelings of being cheated and further poisoning her mind. I found the story ultimately quite satisfying including the sudden ending which did not leave me feeling short changed but rather it felt like an opportunity for readers to reach their own conclusions of which any number of paths may seem inevitable and that's quite a trick.

. . . and in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To which the hel l I suffer seems a heaven." John Milton, Paradise Lost There are some books that you can finish, put back down on the table and five-minutes later have it virtually erased from your consciousness. Stefan Zweig's "The Post-Office Girl" stayed with me long after I put the book down. It is a brilliantly crafted book that looks at the mind-boggling despair that can crush the soul out of just about anyone. What makes the book memorable is the fact that Zweig does not write with an overwhelming appeal to pathos. No, instead, Zweig is direct and his narrative manages to convey this sense of despair without drowning the reader in rhetorical devices aimed at soliciting sympathy for his characters. The setting is post World War I Austria in the 1920s. The Austro-Hungarian empire has been dismantled after the Treaty of Versailles and Austria, like her ally Germany, is suffering the `economic consequences of the peace'. The Post-Office Girl is Christine Hoflehner. At the war's outset, Christine and her family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence in Vienna. But the war and the economic suffering brought on by the hyper-inflation of the 1920s has booted Christine out of Vienna and her middle class life. She and her mother live at the poverty level in a one-room bed-sitter in a village two hours from Vienna. Christine works as a low-ranking postal official in the town's post office. As the story opens she's in her 20s and merely going through the motions. But her robot-like existence is shattered when she receives a telegram (a big event) from an aunt, her mother's sister, who left Austria before the war and married a rich American businessman. They invite Christine to spend a holiday with them in a Swiss mountain resort. Christine goes grudgingly but is astonished at the life she is exposed too. Her aunt buys her beautiful clothes, feeds her well and all of a sudden Christine is exposed to a life she never knew existed. She takes to it immediately. She relishes her new life and cherishes every minute of it. But no sooner has she found a new life than she is tossed back into the old one. Any despair Christine may have felt before her Swiss trip is now magnified by the fact that she has actually seen how different life can be. She arrives at what she thought was the lowest deep only to discover that there are depths of despair yet to go. It is at this point that she finds Ferdinand on a day trip to Vienna. For Ferdinand life has been, if anything, more unkind to him than to Christine. Their meeting and their developing relationship takes us through the second half of the book. They know they are soul mates but their existence is such that they each know that love (if you can call their fumbling attempts at personal physical and social intimacy love) is not nearly enough to be of any help to them at all. They face the question posed by Milton in the heading of this review - which way shall they fly? Zweig's resolution is, in this context, perfect. What Zweig has done so well in my opinion is to use Christine and Ferdinand as a masterful vehicle for looking at Austrian (and Europe generally) society in the aftermath of the Great War. Zweig's characters are well crafted and felt very realistically drawn to me. They were absorbing, warts and all. "The Post-Office Girl" was well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in reading a book that lingers with you after you are done. L. Fleisig

This book was a very interesting book. I did not see the end coming. I felt that the translation in the first half of the book appeared to have been done by someone who was taking part in completing their PHD in obsolete English words. The translator must have spent a very very long time to find the very complicated words that were used in place of nouns and adjectives. As I read this book on my e reader I was able to check the meaning of the words, at first I thought that there must have been spelling mistakes . I would have to say that i needed to do this at least once on each page. Most times the words that were used in this instance, one could not even gain an inference as to what was the meaning of the word just by reading the sentence. When I was half way through the book this appeared to change. It was almost like another person had translated the second half of the book. I will read more of Stefan Zweig books as he seems to have a good writing style. His description of the people , where they live and how they live, how they deal with everyday life was very well expressed.

I judge Stefan Zweig's forte to be the ability to describe the protagonist's inner thoughts, moods, fears, hates, revulsions, in short what is going on inside the brain. In this case it is Christine, the young clerk who in 1923 runs the post office in a dull little town in Austria; a town where nothing happens; where the people have lived there forever; in short, life there is boring and stagnant. Christine can barely get by on the low wage she is paid. She lives with her dying mother in an attic room. There is no pleasure for her. She believes her destiny is to live that way all of her days. But then she receives an invitation from her aunt, married to a rich American, to come for a few weeks and vacation with them in the Swiss Alps at a posh hotel. Christine readily accepts; the first vacation she has ever had. She arrives in her shabby clothing carrying her straw suitcase. The aunt quickly supplies her with fine dresses, fine clothing for every occasion, some purchased and some loaned out of the aunt's belongings. She is taken to the beauty parlor; her hair is done; she gets make-up; in just a few hours she has been transformed into a beautiful young woman. She quickly gets on with the young set; upper class girls and men living the fast life; men are attracted to her; in no time she is in a new life style and loving it. But one of the girls is jealous; does some snooping and Christine is unmasked, ostracized, and humiliated; accused of deliberately faking. Even the aunt wants her gone. And so it is back to the old hum-drum life as the post office girl. Christine never overcomes the pain (this is what Zweig is so good at describing), but on a visit to Vienna to see her sister she chances to meet a man in similar circumstances. They begin a friendship, seeing each other on weekends, the only time each of them has free time. Ferdinand has served in the army, interned in Siberia for 4-5 years, finally comes home to Vienna; the wealth of his middle class family has evaporated in hyper-inflation; he is an engineer but working far below his qualifications; then his job is gone when the owner embezzles the company funds and the company collapses. He is suicidal and comes to Christine at the post office to tell her that it's over; he will take his life with a pistol. Christine feels the same and they will do it jointly. But then Ferdinand notices that Christine is counting the money and balancing the books at day's end. Why should this money (quite a large sum) go to the government when it is the government that is at the root of their failure, their unhappiness? He begins persuading Christine that they should take the money and run off for a new life, but for it to succeed it must be planned carefully. Christine is not so sure. - - I will not tell the ending. - - The translation is excellent. I found the first half melodramatic and slow, but certainly the end game is first class.

The setting is economically depressed post World War I Austria, which is a shadow of its former glory as the center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Christine Hoflehner is the "post office girl" who lives a crushingly routine existence managing a post office and nursing her ailing mother in the rural wine-growing region of Austria. Although her life is mundane, it is settled, and Christine doesn't really question the greyness of small village conformity and poverty. Her life changes dramatically when she is invited by an American aunt to a luxury hotel in the Egadine region of Switzerland. She is soon caught up in the swirl of post WWI partying and decadence amongst the European idle rich, and she quickly transforms (with the aid of her aunt's wardrobe) from shy, retiring provincial to elegant and seemingly sophisticated "Christine van Boolen." Her dizzying ascendance to toast of the party is matched by a crashing fall to laughingstock. She leaves the hotel early, destroyed in the knowledge that she has been exposed to an opulent side of life that she will never again realize. The second half of the book covers Christine's relationship with Ferdinand, a completely hollowed-out and cynical war veteran. The two form a relationship not forged in love but rather in mutual despair. The bleakness of their lives bonds them, and they ultimately craft a desperate plan to escape the torture of their daily struggles. This wonderful book reminds me of Thomas Hardy's best works, since it deals so eloquently with the drabness of rural life and individuals cast adrift in a seemingly random and cruel world. However, unlike most of Hardy's novels, the ending is surprisingly original and refreshing with an opportunity (however slight) for redemption.

The explosive psychological effects of release from impoverished life to rich playground in the high altitude Alps and abandoned return. This is sensuous writing with rich descriptions: the landscapes, the interiors, the clothing are characters. A formerly bourgeois Viennese family scrapes by in poverty from WW1, economic disruption, death and inflation. Through her brother-in-law's influence in socialist municipal politics, the etiolated 28 year old Christine manages a wine country post office. With her meager sinecure, she caretakes her failing mother. Her nouveau riche American aunt invites her to vacation in St Moritz. The girl falls in with wealthy contemporaries, the postwar generation. It's the 1920's, Christine is giddy with beauty, youth, sensuality, awakening sexuality and the freedom of money. Released from her daily responsibilities, unwise, unaware of consequences and possibilities, self-involved whether anxious or intoxicated, she slips on false impressions. Her social climbing aunt feels threatened with exposure. The girl returns to her cramped life where "too expensive" is the daily mantra. She meets her brother-in-law's comrade, architecture student become laborer, aged after 11 years of war and prison camps; in abject poverty as his family's lands were lost in postwar redrawn borders. They find one another simpatico in envy, exiled from the world of choice. They plan for "freedom": suicide or robbery.

A story of poverty, despair and disillusioned lives. (Another ‘light’ read, LOL.) A young woman, a post office clerk in Austria, has lived in poverty supporting her mother most of her life. She was born in 1898 and thus in her teens went through the deprivations of WW I. “The war stole her decade of youth.” Her small village offers no marriage prospects. Suddenly a wealthy aunt and uncle from the United States invite her to visit with them on vacation in the Swiss Alps. For a little more than one week, the young woman enters a whirlpool of an unimaginable life. Her aunt buys her clothes and cosmetics and re-styles her hair – not realizing she spent an amount equal to her niece’s annual salary. Hotels, dancing, gambling, restaurants, room service and maids, fast cars (and petting with the wealthy men in them). Her uncle shares a single gambling bet with her, not realizing he has given her another half of her annual salary. It’s TOO much. It all ends abruptly and she goes back to her village and her job. Her mother soon dies. She plunges into despair at her again-empty life. She turns into a petty tyrant at the post office, snapping at customers and making them strictly follow all the stupid bureaucratic rules. She has a sister in Vienna, an hour’s train ride away, and here she finally meets her soulmate - an old army buddy of her brother-in-law. The man she meets is equally poverty-stricken and disillusioned with life because he has crippled hands from the war but no disability pension. Jobs where you don’t need to use your hands are hard to come by as the depression is looming. Then he loses that job and he’s worried about turning into a beggar on the streets. They both come to believe in the “horrible purposelessness of life:” “Every morning when I go to work I see people coming out of their front doors, underslept, cheerless, their faces blank, see them going to work that they haven’t chosen and have no love for and that means nothing to them, and then again in the evening I see them in the streetcars on their way back, their expressions leaden, their feet leaden, all of them exhausted for no good reason, or some reason they don’t understand.” They meet weekly in Vienna but have no money to really enjoy themselves. They can’t even afford a hotel to be intimate – they tried a flophouse and she is terrified to go back after it was raided by the police looking for prostitutes. They are so disillusioned that he talks her into committing suicide with him. (He has a pistol from the war.) This incident about joint suicide eerily foreshadows the way the author will die. He and his second wife killed themselves with poison in exile in Brazil in 1942. Zweig fled Austria as he was Jewish. But once you’re open to suicide, other previously unthinkable possibilities occur to you. But what are the chances it will work out? They decide to try. There's good writing: “Someone who’s on top of the world isn’t much of an observer: happy people are poor psychologists. But someone who’s troubled about something is on the alert. The perceived threat sharpens his senses – he takes in more than he usually does.” “ ‘No, no,’ Christine says, or rather her lips say it, the way a patient going under anesthesia might continue counting after losing consciousness.” Zweig (1881-1942) was a prolific author with 25 or so books. Only a few, such as Post Office Girl, are full novels – many are novellas and collections of short stories. He was at one time considered the most translated author in the world.