One More Story

December 15, 2009
Schulze's short story collectionwhich won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2007 upon its original publication in Germanyopens with a tone-setting quote by Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker: "Then one day followed the next without the basic questions of life ever being solved." The deftly painted slices of life featuring settings as varied as New York City and the Estonian countryside explore love and relationships, life in the postsocialist era (like the advance of cell phones), and the act of storytelling. Each story has a first-person narrator, who occasionally seems to be Schulze himself, but some play with meta-narratives. In "Incident in Cairo," the narrator mentions John Woods, Schulze's translator, making him an active participant in the text in more ways than one. VERDICT While this is a work of serious fiction, it is also approachable. Readers will find much in common with the stories' protagonists. Highly recommended.Karen Walton Morse, Univ. at Buffalo Libs., NY

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2010
The original German version of this fiction collection bore the title Handy: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode, a reference to the prominent role of the cell phone (das Handy in colloquial German) in several of these short stories and a hint at the tension between old and new, which undergirds them all. As in his luminous novel New Lives (2008), Schulze introduces us to characters whose relationships have been complicated by the melting of all that may have once seemed solid in our increasingly capitalist world. Calcutta (its title an allusion to Gnter Grass Indian sojourn) probes the false intimacies of suburban neighborliness; in Estonia, Out in the Country, a former circus bear becomes a desperate economic opportunity; in Faith, Love, Hope Number 23, even love itself may be a trick played upon a young lawyer. Arguably the centerpiece, New Years Eve Confusions adeptly uses a mans fantasies of romantic fulfillment with a long-ago lover to explore the emotional resonance of German reunification. An expert at subtly disorienting his audience, Schulze writes in a disarmingly simple style that gives the impression of openness and intimacy even as it reveals ugly fractures and unforeseen complications.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)