![]() ![]() with a full-throated laugh and utter amazement.” (Sept. more profound than any had encountered,” and later, watching the Moon landing with his neighbors in their new parish hall, he feels “mysteriously close and connected to the villagers down here on the darkened Earth.” Nearing his end, Egger “couldn’t remember where he had come from, and ultimately he didn’t know where he would go. His resilience to come through some extremely painful episodes is a good essay on the power of the human spirit. Readers will discover in his contained prose a vehicle for keen insight and observation: Egger, touched for the first time by his future wife, experiences “a very subtle pain. It is indeed a story of a whole life of a humble unassuming character who experienced life's ups and downs and forged his own way which often left him isolated and alone. Not always successfully, Seethaler seeks to avoid sentimentality. ![]() The titanic forces of nature and politics determine Egger’s arduous course through the 20th century. But the mountainous land he loves-and through which, in his middle age, he leads groups of hiking tourists-is far from serene. Egger, however, contains multitudes: subjected to childhood beatings that leave him with a permanent limp, he stands up to his abusive uncle and goes on to become an expert cable-car company employee, as well as a devoted husband and father. The life chronicled in Seethaler’s poignant novel is, at first glance, unremarkable: Andreas Egger begins and ends his life in an Alpine valley village, where he arrives after his mother’s death in 1902, and to which he returns in 1951, after years as a POW in Russia. ![]()
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