From Kirkus Reviews
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A debut collection of 12 linked stories portraying the life of a small Austrian village and its inhabitants
over the course of the 20th century. Rosenau is not the sort of place that you can expect to find on a , let alone in
many novels. A remote hamlet in the Alpine foothills of western Austria, it is ancient but not especially picturesque
and would probably disappoint any tourist who happened across it. Nearly all of its people are farmers, farmers wives,
and farmers children, and the few civic officials who reside therethe priest, the schoolteacher, the postmistress, and
so ondeal with farmers all day long and become inevitably agrarian themselves. Externally uneventful, its an intensely
domestic environment and most of its dramas occur within one household or another. Lippi understands and makes good use
of the stories there, which occur among people who know or are related to everyone else and become marvelously cyclical
and haunting. A lovers postcard addressed only to Anna Fink arrives in 1909, for example, and causes confusion because
there are at least three women of that name in town. A lonely spinster working her brothers farm in 1916 gives shelter
to an Italian deserter and is plagued by him after he leaves, while other women somehow have to survive the deaths or
mutilations of their sons or husbands. In 1938, a Nazi medical functionary arrives in search of two retarded brothers,
soon to be transferred to an institution elsewhere; the brothers are turned over to their deaths by their loving but
ignorant sister. Years later, the inhabitants find themselves hauntedsometimes literallyby those who died or disappeared
at the front. Many of the women, unable to find a man to marry after the war, become sharp-eyed but wistful observers of
the town and its lifeand narrators of its stories. Delicate and a t introspective, but very fine and moving. Lippi
has a clear eye and a sharp tongue. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Review
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"This is a novel of great depth, compassion and tenderness. " -- Brigitte Frase The New York Times
"Each of the 12 keenly observed, interconnected stories in this absorbing debut collection focuses on an epochal moment
in the life of one of three generations of women in the tiny Austrian town of Rosenau and the surrounding homesteads.
Although Rosenau is bounded on all sides by the Alps, there is a slow influx of events from the outside world. When the
book opens in 1909, a postcard arrives at the general store, and the effects of this brief misaddressed note ripple the
surface of the isolated hamlet. Later, many men fail to return from the front during WWI; meanwhile, their families live
in suspended fear about their e. In a moving and poignant tale, an Italian deserter seeks protection and comforts a
lonely woman who has never had a lover. During the next war, a German soldier arrives in a gleaming Dler and carries
off the town's two "feeble" boys to their doom. Each of these events upsets the town's equilibrium. But by the time the
book closes in 1977, the effects of these foreign intrusions have been absorbed in the continuing cycles of birth,
marriage, death and the changing seasons. Having herself lived for some years in the Bregenz Forest area of western
Austria, Lippi conveys a haunting sense of place and a pervasive social code. Clan charts and a glossary explain the
archaic language and distinctive conventions of the region, but it is the cumulative effect of the stories themselves
that envelops the reader in a time and place that is at once strange and universal. " Publishers Weekly
"By the time you finish the first of these linked stories, you can hardly bear to have it end." The New Yorker
"The setting for this poignant novel is Rosenau, an isolated Austrian Village, and the story encompasses generations of
villagers and their lives. The magic of the novel lies in the author's ability to make the faraway seem
familiar, even when it is tragic or brutal. Structured as short stories told from the viewpoints of different members of
the village, the novel follows their intertwined lives from 1909 through 1977, layering story upon story to develop the
village and the characters. Lippi's characters are nothing short of wonderful. There is, for example, Johanna, whose
heart is torn between her love for Francesco--a soldier hiding in the Austrian Alps--and her sister Angelika, who hides
her dependence upon Johanna behind not-so-subtle reminders of familial duty. And there is Katharina, whose impulsiveness
causes her to betray her two half-brothers for a ride in a Nazi motorcar, and Stante, who proves his worth not only in
the Wainwright's workshop but also by his courage withstanding the Nazis. The character portrayals are based upon
Lippi's own experiences living in Austria for four years. You'll hate for these stories to end." .com
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