Fear by Stefan Zweig
My rating: 5/5 cats
this is my second dip in the zweig pool, and i’m pretty much sold. i do wish someone would publish a volume of his collected works so i don’t have to keep buying these tiny, albeit beautiful, pushkin press editions. they can be read in the time it takes to eat a box of crackers. and then you are left with no crackers and no more book. and that is a heavy-souled feeling.
ya know what is also a heavy-souled feeling?? the guilt of infidelity. a seamless transition into the book by ms. brissette (2 points). bored by a “perfect” life into an equally boring affair, and then blackmailed by the ex-lover of her current lover, irene experiences fear. seamless name-drop of title (4 points). what follows is 100 pages of slow psychological breakdown as she pays off her blackmailer and fears exposure. overcome by angst (mention of the german title: 5 points), she contemplates suicide (naturally; it is zweig, after all) and homicide as she tries to find a way out of the hole she has dug herself into.
there is the usual poking at the bourgeoisie, and an ending that i half-expected, but it was completely satisfying. zweig does character so well – all the false starts and crazy notions and deliberations of this woman are crystallized into impressive and taut prose that makes the story more of a thriller than you would expect considering that it is mostly hand-wringing consciousness of her burning secret (name drop of another zweig book: 5 points), and not the big explosions of a more modern thriller.
i have earned many points here tonight.
my work is done.
go read some zweig.
