About this title: The post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort. After a dizzying train ride, Christine finds herself at the top of the world, enjoying a life of privilege that she had never imagined. But Christine's aunt drops her as abruptly as she picked her ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Sort of Books
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780954221720ISBN:0954221729
Description: New. A young Austrian woman, Christine, toils away in a provincial post office when, out of the blue, a telegram arrives inviting her to join an American aunt she's never known in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almo... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781590172629ISBN:1590172620
Description: New. The post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addres... read more
Description: New. Please note that deliveries to addresses in the UK and Europe will be in 4-14 business days. Other countries should refer to Alibris standard times. ISBN10: 0954221729. read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE: All books are promptly shipped from our UK warehouse using Royal Mail International Priority mail. Heavier or more expensive books are shipped with a TRACKING NUMBER. Professional and reliable bookseller (est.1987). read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Date Published: 2008-04-15
ISBN-13:9781590172629ISBN:1590172620
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781590172629. read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE: All books are promptly imported from the UK using DHL or Royal Mail international mail WITH TRACKING NUMBER. Delivery is typically 5-10 working days. Please do not select expedited shipping. Professional and reliable bookseller (est.1987). read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE that we do not offer expedited shipping. Orders placed with the priority shipping option will automatically be canceled. ISBN10: 0954221729. read more
"A very bleak book, but I enjoyed it--especially the first 2/3. Very political. Examines the psychological effects of grinding poverty, leading to the fascist/communist conflicts of Germany between the wars.
"Very interesting account of Austria post WW1 through the eyes of the disillusioned and the poor. I emjoyed moving on to this after the horrors of Oscar and Lucinda in Morocco - it was a much better use of my holiday! Highly recommended."
"This book was so moving. Austria post WWI and the state that the war left the population. Focusing on young adults that lost their youth and hope. The book was published posthumously. Zweig was huge prior to the war. He ended up fleeing from the Nazis to Brazil just prior to WWII. He commited suicide with his wife in 1942."
I bought it on a whim in one of the few bookstores in Mexico City which had books in English. Since I had little time nor inclination to read in Mexico, it took me a month to finally pick it up and read it. And wow.
We follow Christine, a girl in her mid-twenties who has never enjoyed the thrill of youth. She grew up in Austria during WWI, and watched her family's possessions and members disappear during the onslaught. After the war she watched what remained vanish in an imploding economy. Broke, near-destitute, and taking care of her dying mother, she has no idea how miserly her life is... UNTIL her aunt, who is rich and lives in America, invites her to come to a resort in Switzerland.
When she arrives she suddenly realizes how poor she is; how down-trodden she looks; and how destitute her life has been. She blossoms through Zweig's wonderful writing (which in this part of the book somewhat resembles Henry James' prose) and Christine becomes a beautiful vibrant woman, eagerly devouring her new world, excited at new possibilities that she had never dreamed of, and the object of everyone's attention (esp. the men).
SPOILERS BELOW!!!!
Until something goes wrong. Something which exposes her naivete and reveals the vile superficiality of her new wealthy environ.
And then the book shifts gears. Suddenly the prose is desolate and dry; closer to Dashiell Hammett or the Hemingway who wrote "A Clean Well-Lighted Space." Everything is gray and hopeless and Christine is once again a post-office girl, herself like her office, drab, gray, hopeless. But now she is aware of her plight and is filled with rage and hate.
Until she meets a compatriot who shares her sensibility.
My friend thought the second half of the book felt forced, but I disagree. I've often felt like Christine, since I come from an incredibly modest background and have spent much time around the rich. To me, Christine feels real and true. I love the way that the novels constantly misdirects us (for example, leading us to believe that Christine will be saved by one of the (few) gallant men she has met - from the honest and earnest school teacher to the valiant and stalwart titled gentleman who takes her under his wing in Switzerland).
Anyway, this novel was never published, and perhaps never finished. Zweig supposedly contemplated a third part to this book which would have transformed this book from a Jamesian failed-Cinderella story into a Tarantino revenge/caper. I'm glad he didn't, since I like the mystery we are stuck with, but still... a writer as kick ass as Zweig could deliver an amazingly doomed Bonnie and Clyde ending to his dark Cinderella story."
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