October 15, 2018
German-Swiss novelist Wells' fourth book--his first to be translated into English--is a bittersweet, intricately plotted family saga that centers on Jules Moreau and his elder siblings.After their parents die in an accident when Jules is 10, he, his sister, Liz, and his brother, Marty, are sent to a boarding school, and gradually they recede from each other, drift away from the (now haunted) intimacy they shared before. Liz becomes a beautiful, enigmatic butterfly, ever elusive; the driven Marty hurls himself into his studies, seizes on a new big idea, and becomes an early internet entrepreneur. Meanwhile, the awkward, dreamy Jules wants to become a photographer (his father's thwarted passion) or a writer. Fifteen years or so later, he reconnects with his friend and chief solace from those lonely schooldays, Alva, for whom he nursed a love that wasn't so much unrequited as tantalizingly out-of-phase. She's married now, it turns out, to a much older Russian-born writer who was one of their adolescent literary idols, and Jules leaves his job as a record-company executive to live with them in a remote chalet. He and Alva resume their old chaste companionship, and her husband, whose memory has begun to fail in ways at first scarcely visible but ever more conspicuous, encourages Jules to rededicate himself to his old ambition of writing fiction. What emerges from his stay in Switzerland is a dense network of connections and collaborations, not only with Alva and her husband, but also with Liz and Marty. Some of these links are wished for, some half-accidental, some ardently chased after, some resisted or delayed or lamented or clear only after years of being obscured, but all of them are inescapable--which turns out to be a pretty fair definition of family. Wells' style is less antic than that of his admired elder John Irving, but in setting, tone, density of plot, and a streak of (occasionally heavy-handed) didacticism, the resemblances are strong.The book's earnestness weighs it down from time to time, but overall Wells has written a tender, affecting novel, one that packs a lot into a slender frame.
COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 5, 2018
Wells’s satisfying first book to be translated into English hints at an answer to a struggle most people confront—being, or feeling, alone—but ultimately suggests there isn’t one. The story is the account of three siblings: Jules Moreau, the narrator, and his older siblings Liz and Marty. The trio lose their parents in a car accident when Jules is 11, and all move from Munich to boarding school. They grow apart; Marty throws himself into his studies, and Liz falls in with a fast crowd. Jules retreats into himself, until he meets Alva, another child dealing with family troubles of her own. Alva and Jules are inseparable for years; but when their friendship hints at becoming romantic, Alva balks for reasons even she can’t articulate, and they fall out of touch. Jules tells his story retrospectively, until his narration catches up to his present, in which he is drawn back into Alva’s complicated life when she unexpectedly answers an email of his and invites him to visit her. Touching and timeless, the story is expertly and evocatively rendered, in prose both beautiful and sparse enough to cut clearly to the question at the novel’s heart: how one copes with loss that isn’t—or doesn’t have to be—permanent.
Starred review from November 1, 2018
Winner of the 2016 European Prize for Literature, German author Wells' fourth novel and U.S. debut portrays lives abruptly redirected by loss. Middle-aged narrator Jules is laid up in a Munich hospital, looking back on his whole life. At 11, he loses his parents in a car accident abroad and then his two older siblings when they're separated at the grim boarding school they must now attend. There, Jules finds a sole friend and perhaps a soul mate in Alva, who's protecting a hurt of her own. Wells' depiction of young Jules' grief and the magical thinking that comes with it will undoubtedly affect readers. His relationships with Alva and his siblings shifting all the while, Jules grows up, and memories of his parents continue to resurface and morph. He marvels at the childhood interests and securities he lost all at once and, it seems, a whole former self along with them. A love story and a life story, this rich and well-translated domestic drama acknowledges that some bonds are truly immutable in the face of, or perhaps because of, tragedy and that our memories and the stories we make of them, though they may change, are as real as anything.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)