"A Whole Life" by Robert Seethaler

The whole life genre in novels is one I have always been attracted to. It takes such skill to do it really well, maintaining the narrative interest through middle and old age while keeping it all believable. One way of approaching the task is to do what the Austrian novelist Robert Seethaler does here, and which Jon Fosse did in his lovely novel 'Morning and Evening' which I read last year, is to pare it all back and keep it simple. Instead of writing a complex novel with multiple characters, these both look to portray the lives of very ordinary men who live without any sophistication in a rural location. The appalling and amazing world of the twentieth century thus unfolds in the background and is not centre stage as it is in the larger, more epic whole life novels. The fact that not so much really ever changes for these central characters then becomes a virtue, enabling the writer to focus on fundamental aspects of life like birth, death and close personal relationships.

These are all handled beautifully in this short novel. The central character is Andreas Egger. He lives in the Alps and, except for a short period when he is a prisoner of war in Russia, does not move away from the area he grows up in throughout his life. He is essentially decent, not at all well-educated but physically strong. His life is anything but privileged and is essentially one that is ultimately lived in solitude. But memorable moments light it up from time to time, and these form the basis of the narrative.

This novel was originally published in German in 2014, and then in the UK in this translation by Charlotte Collins a year later. Well worth reading.