Well this is one of those novels that just makes me wonder if professional reviewers are completely fucking high – or if we even read the same book.

I thought the plot was tedious and oppressive, the characters deeply unlikeable, and the prose stylistically barren. I am giving it two stars because most of this is deliberate and therefore competently done – Stamm is apparently one of those writers who thinks that the best way to reflect the disorientation of the modern world is to write books that hold everything at arm's length and relate all narrative in the same dull monotone. (He reminds me a little of Michel Houellebecq, although the papers prefer to make unwise comparisons with Camus.) Dialogue is stripped of quote marks and bunched together in single paragraphs for extra literary cred:

I asked her if she didn't want to call ahead to set up interviews, but she shook her head. The best thing was just to drop by, once people saw you they had more trouble saying no to you. You mean your beauty will win them over? She looked at me furiously. That's mean, I can't help the way I look. I said it could be worse, and laid my hands on her shoulders and pulled her against me, and now she hugged me and kissed me properly. She asked if I'd slept well. I said, I dreamed about you. That's not true, admit it.

End paragraph. Anthony Cummins of the Observer thinks this is a good way of ‘keeping us on our toes’. Well I'm as en pointe as the next reader, but the issue is not that it's confusing, it's that it's irritating and it makes everything tonally flat.

It is possible to write about the cold, dead detachment of modern life in an engaging way – JG Ballard does it, but that's because he writes sentences full of compressed wit and unusual simile. Stamm's prose is described by fans as being ‘sparse’ or ‘economical’ or ‘cool’ but the reality is that it's just extremely boring. The New Statesman actually quotes the following as an example of his flair for ‘the apparently innocent descriptive sentence that comes saturated in mental atmosphere’:

Sometimes, when Sonia was in bed already, I would go for a walk down to the Academy, and sit by the shore and think about my life, and how it could have been different.

Really? That's a sentence we should be admiring? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. Sometimes, when Sonia was in bed already, I would go for a walk down to the Academy, and sit by the shore and think about my life, and how it could have been different. I don't even know how to argue with someone who puts this forward as an example of great writing. My two-year-old daughter's analysis of Frozen is more profound than this plodding description of one moron's trivial mid-life crisis.

The whole plot is in fact staggeringly banal: a man is married to a gorgeous but inhibited woman and he has an affair with an ‘ugly’ Polish immigrant because he can. This is ‘far from being merely another novelistic account of an affair’, according to Toby Litt in the Guardian – ‘what helps it transcend this is one of the great characters of contemporary fiction’, namely Ivona, the Polish Other Woman.

I mean…what. The mind boggles. Ivona is the opposite of a great character of contemporary fiction. A useless character of historical biography, perhaps. She says about three words in the entire novel, and is characterised wholly by her unmotivated and implausible adoration of our protagonist. She is a symbol of lower-class pathos with no personality of her own.

Once again I found Michael Hofmann's translation just okay, with a few clunky moments. Hilariously, Sarah Fay in the New York Times writes about Hofmann's ‘conscientious translations, which even maintain the comma splices that occur regularly in German but appear as grammatical errors in English’ – but because she has already decided this is a work of near-genius, she concludes that this stylistic mis-step must be ‘a device that serves to illustrate the frailty of the characters’ perceptions’. Bullshit. And if it were true, it would still be a mistake, since by her own argument it's an effect not present in the original.

I am sick to death of these writers who think stylelessness is an acceptable style, and of these coolly distant novels that think emotional detachment is the best way to explain emotional detachment. And I didn't even get around to mentioning the laboured architectural metaphors…actually you know what, fuck it, I'm downgrading this to one star. Enough. ( )

Architect Alex is gehuwd met Sonia, zakenpartner en in zijn ogen meer gedreven en meer talentrijk als hij zelf. Hij heeft anderzijds een beetje een sullige relatie met Iwona, een wat armoedige Poolse immigrante; een relatie die eerder als een grap begon, maar meer en meer dient om aan zijn sexuele behoeften te voldoen, zonder dat Iwona hier echt op aandringt. Reeds vroeg in het boek (pagina 25) krijgen we van Alex zelf een analyse: "Sonja was de absolute tegenpool van Iwona. Ze was mooi en schrander en praatte veel, ze was charmant en op een natuurlijke manier zelfverzekerd. Ik vond haar aanwezigheid altijd een beetje intimiderend en had het gevoel beter te moeten zijn dan ik was. Bij Iwona verliep de tijd oneindig traag en vielen er pijnlijke stiltes. Ze gaf heel summier antwoord als ik iets vroeg en ik was degene die er steeds voor moest zorgen dat het gesprek niet stokte. Sonja daarentegen was de perfecte gezelschapsdame. ... Maar Sonja zou nooit tegen een man zeggen dat ze van hem hield, niet zoals Iwona dat tegen mij had gezegd: alsof er geen enkele andere mogelijkheid bestond. Ik had Iwona's liefdesverklaring net zo pijnlijk gevonden als het idee dat ik samen met haar zou gezien worden." Alex heeft zich duidelijk vast gereden en de drie protagonisten leiden (ja, zelfs lijden) hun eigen (minder rooskleurig) leven. Als Iwona zwanger wordt van een dochter terwijl het bij Sonia maar niet kan lukken, overtuigt Alex beide dames vrij snel en zonder veel moeite om dochter Sophie te laten opgroeien bij hem en Sonia. Het ganse verhaal wordt door Alex vertelt aan Antje een oudere kunstenares, vriendin van Sonia, die open staat voor het ganse verhaal maar, ondanks haar eigen vrijgevochten manier van leven, toch af en toe met het opgestoken vingertje tussenkomt. Dat Alex niet kan kiezen tussen de twee vrouwen, kan hij zelf niet goed uitleggen en begrijpen, het ganse verhaal wordt dan ook door hem vrij sec gebracht. De auteur slaagt er op die manier in om zeer afstandelijk de situatie te schetsen en laat het aan de lezer over om al dan niet zoals Antje een mening te vormen. Deze vier personen worden vrij neutraal door de auteur geschetst (in tegenstelling tot een aantal randfiguren, vrienden en familie, die een meer uitgesproken visie over de situatie laten klinken). Als lezer heb je dan ook weinig sympathie voor de hoofdpersonages, en dat is nu net de sterkte van het ganse boek. De zeer belangrijke gedachte bij het ganse verhaal is de nood tot het nemen van verantwoordelijkheid. Je kan na lezing een interessante discussie aangaan wie nu al dan niet zijn/haar verantwoordelijkheid heeft opgenomen. Dit lijkt me een belangrijke discussie en alleen al daarom is het boek het lezen waard. Toch even zeggen dat in de Nederlandse vertaling heel wat storende tik- en taalfouten staan. ( )

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/seven-years-peter-stamm/ ( )

In this novel of obsessive love, Alex, an architectural student in Munich, vacillates between his admiration for a fellow-student (Sonya) and his irrational attraction to a dumpy, taciturn Polish woman (Ivona). Although Alex eventually marries Sonya and starts an architectural firm with her, he remains strangely drawn to Ivona. What at first seems to be Alex’s inexplicable obsession with an unworthy woman is slowly revealed to be Alex’s desire for unconditional love and the freedom such a love provides. Seven Years is a masterful exploration of forbidden love and its consequences. ( )

Seven Years is written in a distanced, emotionally-detached style while taking as its subject matter emotional detachment. It makes me wonder the extent to which those two things necessarily go together. Perhaps it is possible to write a heated, passionate novel about emotional coldness, but Seven Years is written in the first person from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know much about what he feels and wants, which makes a certain amount of detachment and distance in the writing inevitable.

The story is about a love triangle involving the narrator, Alex, his wife, Sonia, and Ivona, a woman with whom Alex has an inexplicable attraction — inexplicable to him as well as to everyone else who knows them — ever since he met her. Alex and Sonia meet in architecture school in Munich and go on to run an architecture business together. Their relationship begins in a halting, uncertain manner. There is more awkwardness than passion between them; it is as though they know intellectually that they are suited for one another rather than feeling it emotionally.

Alongside the development of this relationship is Alex’s conflicted, on-again, off-again obsession with Ivona, an illegal immigrant from Poland who works in a bookshop. Ivona is unattractive, everyone seems to agree, and also uninteresting. She has nothing of Sonia’s intelligence, style, and poise. She is described in harsh, unforgiving terms as lumpish and bovine. And yet Alex can’t forget her, and he keeps returning to her again and again through his courtship of and marriage to Sonia. Alex is cruel to Ivona and doesn’t seem to care much about it; he knows that she has latched onto him and pinned her hopes on his leaving his wife for her, but still he keeps coming back, not caring much what emotional turmoil she experiences.

Read the rest of the review at Of Books and Bicycles.