In Romania, during Ceaucescu's totalitarian regime, an unnamed clothing-factory worker has been summoned by a sinister party official, Major Albu, for questioning on a Thursday, 10 A.M.
Told in first person, almost all of the story takes place during this worker's tram ride to that appointment.
The narrator has been questioned before and she fears the worse. Her first crime was sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy, asking someone to marry her so she can get out of the country. After that, crimes she knew nothing about were pinned on her falsely.
As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts dash about haphazardly to her promiscuous friend Lilli, who was shot trying to flee to Hungary and torn apart by wild dogs, to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them, her first husband with parents working in the party who almost killed her by a bridge, to her interrogator Albu who begins each session with kiss on her fingers and who has planted a corpse's finger in her purse the last time she was there, and to Paul, her lover, the only love she trusted and found comfort in, despite his constant drunkenness. She ends up getting off the tram one stop later and walking around in an unfamiliar neighborhood. And there, she discovers Paul's betrayal. Her broken heartedness makes her care neither about what happens to her nor for the appointment which she has already missed.

literary reading, not to be taken lightly.

the poetry-like language for which some of the kudos should go to the translators, Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm.

the disoriented and scattered way her story evolved. The reader's attention gets constantly pulled in several different directions. Yet, since the human mind's thought processes work that way, I can understand why the author chose to tell her story in such a format.

Learn more about Herta Muller.

compassion for oppressed societies where opportunity is limited, where freedom is only an entry in a dictionary, where trust and decency are lost, where everyone --from top to bottom-- is trapped in a preposterous power game.

Herta Müller has to be one of Europe's greatest writers, since she has written about the terrors of a crushing regime so lyrically, with so much delicacy, with so much feeling, yet with such great intensity.
Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu's Secret Police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. The recipient of the European Literature Prize, she has also won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for her previous novel, The Land of Green Plums.

it is a gem for writers who want an example of serious fiction and for readers who are interested in literary fiction.

This is a bitter but true-to-life novel telling of a society where distrust, spying on one another, alcoholism, violence, corruption, and personal betrayal are everyday occurrences.
The tone is bleak, dark, and chilling; yet, this is a story of humanity's incredible adaptation and survival under oppression.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Appointment: A Novel   from Amazon.Com!

Created Sep 27, 2003 at 3:47pm • Submit your own review...