This is a very strange novel but apparently celebrated in Austria and published in a new edition here. The story is narrated by a mature woman and covers one week in her life with her husband Hubert. It’s fair to say that their relationship has gone cold but she has a loft at the top of the house which is her retreat. Here, she makes a small living as an illustrator by drawing animals and birds. During the described week, she receives a daily package containing her diary entries from a much earlier time when she experienced temporary deafness and was sent away to the country to be looked after by a gamekeeper. She claims to have an idea of who has sent these.

The way she describes her relationship with her husband is an interesting feature and contains some dry insights into the compromises people make in later life. She spends most of her time trying not to think of, or remember, better times.

The diary entries explain how she meets a stranger, X, who is clearly seriously disturbed and it is one hysterical meeting with him that appears to cure her deafness.

After all this, it is fair to ask what the book is all about. It’s not exactly a feminine classic given that the narrator does very little to change her life, although men are obviously criticised. It might be that she has been traumatised by events around the period of her deafness but nothing additional adds to this hypothesis. Perhaps the book is a kind of allegory of the state of Austria after the Second World War, where Hubert is the blinkered government, and X the damaged citizens, while the loft represents the only escape into the mind.

Who knows? The book ends with the narrator being able to draw a fantastical and creatively inspired dragon instead of the detailed pictures of small creatures and, maybe, that represents some kind of escape.

Should you read it? It’s an interesting story with some perceptive comments about marriage and quite amusing in its own way. As to what the rest means, there’s an interesting discussion to be had!