Anne Weber

Anyone who loves the saying that life is a novel should add, “but often not a good one”. “Reality is beneath contempt, it has the level of a trashy novel,“ – concludes Luft und Liebe – “and if you submit to it, it sucks you down mercilessly into its morass.“ Luft und Liebe is the title of the new novel by German writer Anne Weber, aged 45, who lives in Paris. So far, her slender oeuvre, which oscillates between prim self-reflection and witty imagination, has remained a connoisseur’s taste. The main character in Luft und Liebe is a German writer in her early forties who has lived in Paris for many years. In writing a book, she attempts to give account for an almost annihilating infatuation, a disastrous love affair that is as ignominious as if Kleist’s Käthchen of Heilbronn had been taken in by a marriage swindler (…) After coming back down to earth with a bump (let it not be concealed), not only the narrator, but also her text, need a while to get back on their feet. But then she reaches new heights in an action that may be seen as a highly unusual example of feminine revenge, and saves the day in an irresistibly light-hearted, even celestial epilogue.

Urs Jenny: „Sturz aus allen Wolken“
© Der Spiegel, 15 March 2010