This has been recommended to me more than once, so I was somewhat surprised not to like it more than I did. I think the big problem is that the plot device of, "I saw this woman once and instantly became obsessed with her and completely reorganized my life to stalk her" is just...not that interesting to me. Or convincing. It's kind of hard to believe that this is such a cliche, because really, wtf?
That said, this is in many ways a wonderfully atmospheric novel about bureaucratic morass, and the absolute misery and panic of people caught in its clutches. It has a distinctly East German feel to it, I was thinking to myself, and then I wondered what I meant by that, and decided that it's mostly that something about the prose reminds me of Christa Wolf.
That I finally got around to reading it is in large part because of a tweet from Dan Sinykin calling for someone to do a Buzzfeed style ranking of all the NYRB books,* which inspired me to collect all my unread NYRB books in one area of my to-read shelf:
...and to really make a point of starting to read them. And then I was on a TRAIN, and I had a bookmark from TRANSIT BOOKS, and it was just irresistible.
It's not a bad book, but I'm not sure why so many people have specifically recommended it to me.
* It also inspired me to take a stab at selecting my top 10 NYRB books, here it is:
1. Fair Play
2. Dud Avocado
3. Skylark
4. A High Wind in Jamaica
5. Season of Migration to the North
6. Late Fame
7. The Captain's Daughter
8. Berlin Stories
9. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
10. The Door
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