When someone leaves who is close to you your whole life changes, whether you want it to or not. Everything is changed. Alice is the heroine of these five stories, all about her – and about how life is and love is when people are no longer there. Things are left behind; books, letters, pictures; and now and then you think you see them in someone else's face.
In a firm and touching voice, Judith Hermann tells how life's paths cross, change direction and are led apart, never to be reunited. The result is a book of short stories with astounding sobriety, great literary beauty and incredible power.
‘Judith Hermann has a talent for summoning up settings and atmospheres in two or three sentences, so well that one feels one could reach out and touch them. Her narrative rhythm has absolutely lyrical qualities, it is worked through by melody, rhythm, timbre, without ever seeming effortful or affected. Everything reads as light as air.’ Uwe Wittstock, Die Welt
(...) Hermann’s characters have grown up, and through them Judith Hermann shows that she didn’t just have a good feel for a particular way of life some time in the 90s, but that she is a damn good writer.’ Wiebke Porombka, taz
‘One is drawn in by Judith Hermann’s very reserved tone. (...) Perhaps Alice is Judith Hermann’s best book so far, as effortless as if she had spent 40 years working on it. In fact it was only six years.’ Lothar Schröder, Rheinische Post
