Reviews

loved!! stefan zweig is truly a master at descriptive writing. part one was very reminiscent of a fairy tale (namely Cinderella) that i enjoyed reading before bed as my own little bedtime story. i had to dock a star for how disjointed part two felt in comparison but knowing that this was actually an unpublished work it makes perfect sense for that to be.

Didn’t go the direction that I thought it would, though I loved the juxtaposition between part 1 and part 2. The combination of Grand Budapest Hotel vibes, with government bashing and crime plotting, ouft. Oui oui bébé.

i confess that i was loving the book ‘til christine met ferdinand. the post-office money scheme seemed a little bit rushed to me.

















Highlights

They saved up all week for their Sundays, wanting to spend this one day together without constant penny-pinching, to go to a restaurant or coffeehouses, to the pictures, to drop a few schillings without constantly counting and calculating. And they saved up words and feelings too, thought about what they’d tell each other, and they were both glad to have someone who listened intently, with sympathy and understanding, no matter what happened to them.

This sweet man must have secretly spent days in libraries in Linz or Vienna finding models to copy, must have sharpened his pencils a hundred times and bought special drafting pens to draw and ink these maps, tenderly, patiently, for nights on end, just to produce from his meager means something that was suitable and practical and would delight her. Her journey hasn’t even begun, but he’s anticipated it as though experiencing it himself, at her side for every kilometer of the trip; her route and what will happen to her must have been in his thoughts day and night.

At last, during a pause, he bashfully takes a white folded object out of his breast pocket. She must forgive him, of course it’s not a gift, just a little something, maybe it’ll come in handy. Surprised, she opens the long handmade paper construction. It’s a map of her route from Linz to Pontresina, to be unfolded accordion-style. All the rivers, mountains, and cities along the train route are microscopically labeled in black ink, the mountains shaded in with finer or coarser hatching corresponding to their altitude and with meter figures shown in tiny numerals, the rivers drawn in blue pencil, the cities marked in red; distances are indicated in a separate table at bottom right, exactly as on the Geographical Institute’s large maps for schools, but here neatly, painstakingly, lovingly copied by a little assistant schoolmaster.
as a former map-maker ohhhh this got me