lokroma reviewed A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
Review of 'A Whole Life' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
In his life he, too, like all people had harboured ideas and dreams. Many things had remained out of reach, or barely had he reached them than they were torn from his hands again. But he was still here. And in the mornings after the first snowmelt, when he walked across the dew-soaked meadow outside his hut and lay down on one of the flat rocks scattered there, the cool stone at his back and the first warm rays of sun on his face, he felt that many things had not gone so badly after all.
In sparse, Hemingwayesque language, Seethaler tells the story of Andreas Egger, born in a prewar alpen country, who as a young man loses his wife in an avalanche. The remote town where he lives has started to construct aerial cable car lifts to attract tourists to the area. Clipped to a cable and suspended …
In his life he, too, like all people had harboured ideas and dreams. Many things had remained out of reach, or barely had he reached them than they were torn from his hands again. But he was still here. And in the mornings after the first snowmelt, when he walked across the dew-soaked meadow outside his hut and lay down on one of the flat rocks scattered there, the cool stone at his back and the first warm rays of sun on his face, he felt that many things had not gone so badly after all.
In sparse, Hemingwayesque language, Seethaler tells the story of Andreas Egger, born in a prewar alpen country, who as a young man loses his wife in an avalanche. The remote town where he lives has started to construct aerial cable car lifts to attract tourists to the area. Clipped to a cable and suspended high in the air, Egger works to maintain the cables. He lives a mostly solitary life in a room attached to the local schoolhouse, and eventually moves to an abandoned cave-like livestock shed built into the side of a mountain. He quietly observes the mountains as they are increasingly scarred with large vertical swaths cleared to make way for the cable cars and the tourists attracted to them. As an old man he even guides hikes for the sightseers.
There is not much plot, but it is a well told story of a simple life with a universality that applies to all of us. It reminds me of Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, another story of a man living a reclusive life close to nature after losing his wife; and doing work that it is destroying the very environment that he treasures. That book was published in 2002 and I like to think that it informed Seethaler's novel. Both books are very male, but speak to all genders about both the beauty that can be found in the outdoors and the complicity of all of us in losing it.
