Isabelle Lehn writes about a woman called Isabelle Lehn – a woman in freefall. Does she have to want everything that’s possible? A young woman struggles and fails with her own goals, society’s expectations and having children. What if you don’t want to seize every opportunity? Isabelle Lehn immerses herself deeply in this self-interrogation. Poetic, ironic, funny and wonderfully open, the book describes Isabelle’s life, her friends and the people she works with – until she goes aground, reaches the point of existential pain. And that’s when she understands: Life is good. It doesn’t have to measure up to the way we once imagined it.
This novel, [...] this autofiction, which exhibits at every turn that it plays with the boundaries between fiction and reality, is tremendously complex.[...] -- Marlen Hobrack - taz
Isabelle Lehn's 'Spring Awakening' is not as paradigmatic as the works of her American, Canadian and Israeli colleagues. Instead, she brings lightness and wit to the subject. -- Meike Fessmann - Süddeutsche Zeitung
[...] the most beautiful novel of the spring [...] is, of course, at the same time the most painfully beautiful novel, for without sweet pain beauty is nothing. -- Katharina Schmitz - der Freitag
Isabelle Lehn creates minimal snapshots that contain great tragedies. [...] a successful generational portrait, [...] an unadorned and therefore beautiful portrait of a woman in her mid-thirties. -- Zita Bereuter - Austrian Radio, FM 4
This uncertainty is a sign of real strength, of the courage to be embarrassed, of playing at high speed with all possible and impossible roles, [...] of the courage to fail. -- Iris Radisch - Die Zeit
Again and again, disruptive manoeuvres composed with care and wit break into the narrative. [...] The author has made literature out of this life. -- Corinna von Bodisco - Der Tagesspiegel
It is the clearing out of all secrets, the airing of even the dustiest corners of a human existence. -- Miryam Schellbach - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
