A Whole Life: Less than 150 pages but one of the most deeply affecting books I have ever read

A Whole Life is an unforgettable and inexorably wise book that will linger in the mind of the reader.

Hurmat Kazmi July 22, 2016
My favourite book of the last year was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Despite its ironic title the novel was little in no way, far from it. At around 800 pages, it was one of the longest novels I read last year and was gargantuan in every way possible; in terms of its subject matter, its length and in terms of the depth and resonance of its character.

My favourite book of this year, so far, is the exact opposite: Austrian writer Robert Seethaler’s novel, A Whole Life. Yet again, despite its ironic title, the novel runs a little less than 150 pages and yet, is one of the most deeply affecting and profound books that I have ever read.

At the slender size of the book one wonders that Seethaler has set himself an overly ambitious task of condensing a man’s entire life into meagre 150 pages. However, it’s the wonderful charm and the miraculous economy of his prose that as the novel proceeds, it seems, startlingly, that the novel stirs depths and reaches heights that many contemporary novels, twice its length, cannot aspire to.

The novel follows the quietly mesmerising life of Andreas Eggers who we first meet as a newly orphaned child in a remote village of Austria. There he stays, without choice, with his brutal and demonic uncle who beats him regularly, sometimes for the slightest mistakes and sometimes for no reason at all.

Eggers, a stoic and laconic boy, endures the hardships, grows up, leaves his uncle and finds work. Seethaler meticulously evokes the sense of technology sweeping over this small village. Progress arrives, cable cars are built and the local villagers, including Eggers, are bamboozled by a tiny morsel of the outside world that they are exposed too. Eggers joins the work force, working as an engineer, bringing steady waves of urbanisation into the village.

Eventually war arrives and Eggers is recruited to serve on the Eastern front. After being captured as a prisoner of war he is posted to a work camp and he remains there for eight years. Upon his return back to his village he is again confronted by the on-going changes and mechanisation that have swept his village. However, Seethaler is never sentimental in his portrayal of these changes or Egger’s response to them.

He adapts stoically, eventually becoming a tour guide for visitors to the Alps and the mountains in the village. Even as he grows old and isolated, as he subscribes to the changes in the land he has lived and laboured in, he comes out as not a sufferer but a survivor whose experiences are consolidated by his unwavering adaptability.

By its end, the novel, in all its vibrant colours, convinces us of its remarkable power to truly capture the whole life of its principle character. Adreas Eggers comes off as a fully drawn, human character, one with whom the reader can fully empathise; rejoicing in his triumphs, moping over his sorrows.

During the course of his elaborate life, precisely portrayed in short, majestic chapters, Eggers grows up, works, falls in love, marries, loses a loved one, goes to war, becomes a prisoner, sees his village being taken over by modernisation and he grows old. He endures the disappointments of life and its tender, small joys and takes the readers along in the journey of his whole life.

The novel, in its taciturn tone and restrained style resembles Stoner by John Williams and Tinkers by Paul Harding. With its understated realism it evokes the dramatic landscape of the Austrian Alps and a life, unnoticed and insignificant, of one of its residents. And yet, the beauty of this novel lies in its moving ability to celebrate the charm of an ordinary life, lived by a poor, unremarkable character, in the same place for a significant part of his life. With one simple character, a singular halcyon setting and an uncluttered plot, it is remarkable and stupefying how universal the appeal of this novel is.

And the writing itself is a joy; a slow moving river of calm and immaculate prose. It renders in sprawling and rivetingly long and spiralling sentences the lush and breath-taking scenes of the European landscape, the comforts and grieves of an ordinary life. Charlotte Collins’ translation of this novel is remarkably disciplined and sensitive and it reminds us of, and respects, the spare and haunting power of Robert Seethaler’s language. The overall result is a novel as moving as it is impacting, a novel that portrays the intimate details of life with an uncanny and remarkable emotional clarity and philosophical wisdom.

A Whole Life is an unforgettable and inexorably wise book that will linger in the mind of the reader for a very long time because despite its svelte and minimalist nature there is something grandiose about it, it carries an intense and sweeping intimacy, as mysterious as life itself; something rare and precious, like a profound memory, that cannot be forgotten.
WRITTEN BY:
Hurmat Kazmi The author is a Karachi-based freelance writer.
The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.

COMMENTS (1)

nasir ali khan | 7 years ago | Reply People should at first refrain from projecting themselves as so called INTELLECTUAL by referring the names of books they are reading.
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