Vienna

by Eva Menasse, 2004

I liked Menasse’s Darkenbloom earlier this year, but I was less taken by this novel. The characters in Vienna seemed less vivid, less dramatic and they don’t come together to form a compelling story.

My sense at first was that the story wasn’t coming together because there were too many characters and no clear focus. But Darkenbloom also dealt with a wide variety of characters – a whole village rather than a family – meandered through their stories and ended in an inconclusive note. However, Darkenbloom had an underlying mystery, and the stories all bring some light to the mystery. It also had a sardonic tone from the narrator which added another layer of interest to the novel.

Vienna, in my reading, has none of these. The characters are mostly dull, they exist in a static society, and the narrator has a flatter tone. The characters make up a complex family dynamic, but there’s nothing especially interesting in the staid middle-class family.

Objectively, some of the characters should be more interesting. Father’s curious trading business, Uncle Ferdinand’s criminal enterprises, Aunt Gustl’s eccentricities could be elements in a colourful family epic. The way the Jewish side of the family survived the Nazi regime by using its ambiguous German relations is an intriguing line, although an undeveloped one. Their later lives in a marginal country on the edge of the Soviet sphere has an interest, but not much of a story. The family tells its stories from the past, but they are tired anecdotes and even the family finds their retelling a bore.

When Father returns to England where he spent the war, he seems to want to connect to his memories, but at the same time treats them as practically insignificant. And when the narrator’s brother causes a sensation by exposing the Nazi past of a national football star, the family – and the country – react by questioning the value of the story. Some members of the family question whether their Jewish past is even relevant in modern Austria.

Is this the point of Menasse’s novel? She seems to be saying that families have plenty of stories that they tell and argue about because they define the family members’ roles to each other and to the broader society, but the stories are a bit boring to outsiders. The narrator tries to bring the family together over its shared histories, but the final family meeting breaks into a fight as different factions within the family identify with different religious and national identities, stories, legends, what-ifs, with no solution, no way out. In the end, the narrator says, everyone talks with circumspection to avoid upsetting anyone else, and the younger generation finds it all irrelevant. This is probably the way with most families, especially large families with diverse branches.

And perhaps this is a metaphor for Austria, a small not-very-important country that has been part of some key histories, with branches and ties into other countries. But to avoid upsetting its more powerful neighbours, it deliberately downplays both its left- and right-wing political factions, its religious and cultural divisions, and strives to present a bland picture of itself.

This may all be an insightful presentation of a contemporary Austrian identity, but I don’t find that it makes a compelling story.