Malina

If you are a Bachman follower (and I am), this novel was a rich extension of her writing. The experience of reading was challenging, but worth every moment. The work becomes a testament to her desire to find a new way of writing in a post-war Europe.

"Equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett," said the New York Times reviewer, and a friend urged this on me, so I picked it up. I was prepared for an ordeal, the last Beckett I'd read being the haunting but ultra-tedious "Ill Seen Ill Said." But "Malina" fell well short of Beckett's tedium quotient, in fact was full of personality and atmosphere. Reviews about "Malina's" symbolic content, the narrator's persona a standin for postwar Austria itself, enacting philosophic questions of identity, and a profile of neurosis, underplay the human level at which this interior monologue, interspersed with conversations, letters, dream accounts etc., is played. The unnamed narrator is decidedly and idiocyncratically human, decidedly a woman of her time (the 70s), decidedly articulate yet down-to-earth. As a male reader I was overwhelmed with the extent to which this successful, accomplished protagonist allows herself to be defined by her male relationships. Could her story still be relevant today, in our enlightened, post-feminist world? I daresay. Bachmann is fully aware of the pathos of her heroine's dependency and plays it to a fare-thee-well, not to mention the hideous past that haunts her. And yet because it's an interior monologue most of the time we identify, we are as close as close can be to narrator, inside her mind, after all: she isn't objectified but becomes a subject for us. The dream sequences, as the narrator recounts them to her paternalistic lover, are as grisly and hard to read as any I've encountered. The writer is skilled indeed in the vividness of her imagery, nevertheless keeping within the symbolic framework of dreams. I like the fact that there are no "sex scenes," even though it's obvious sex occurs regularly, and with two different men. And that the word "love" gets only one or two mentions, though the narrator loves to what for her is the fullest extent, with abandon. So for veterans of Beckett or Woolf or Thomas Bernhard or William Faulkner this isn't going to be such a grind or an ordeal as other reviewers here have suggested. I always have a feeling of exhilaration at the conclusion of any honest, successful, singular achievement in literature (or any other art)--a triumphant feeling, no matter how bleak the subject --and "Malina" afforded me one. A major accomplishment, for all its twists and turns. I had never heard of Bachmann until this novel, even though Austria already confers an "Ingeborg Bachmann Prize" for literature. "Malina" is considered her masterpiece. If you care at all about being culturally literate, this is almost a must-read.

Reading Malina was a submersion into a mind, but unlike other narratives that follow a stream of consciousness through the missed connections and random construction of human thinking, Bachmann strings together a convincing and engaging view of that world. At times, reading the book requires labor, but much of it inspires the type of horrifying interest you sometimes get watching a major pileup on the freeway. I recommend this book to those who like their fiction on heavy on the psychology and light on the narrative.

My daughter-in-law had been searching fr this book to add to her extensive art history library.

As an Austrian I literally grew up with Ingeborg Bachmann. No matter if you read her short stories, poetry, or novel, every single line is deeply compelling and challenging. I have read "Malina" so many times, and this translation truly came up to my expectations as far as quality. ~Pat Paul Jammernegg, author of Prototype

Ingeborg Bachmann is a truly great and underappreciated writer, and this is her masterpiece. It is also the earliest novel I'm aware of on the subject of the lasting impact of child abuse in adult life, written at a time when the possibility of such an experience was almost unspeakable. Her approach is never polemical, but dreamy and suggestive, and the ending is one of the most devastating in literature. Check out her poetry, too.

I wanted to like this but it ultimately could not capture my attention

What can I say. I didn't finish the book. It read like the disjointed ravings of a mad man (woman). After reading the first 100 pages, I didn't want to waste any more time on it.