Novel about missed opportunities  Life Next Door

One life, two paths. In her debut novel, Anne Sauer explores the question of all questions: What if? With impressive ease, she unfolds two possible life plans for her protagonist and shows how close happiness and pain can be. A novel about decisions, missed opportunities and the art of finding oneself in every version of one's own life.

What if ...? A simple question, and already your mind starts racing: What if I had moved to another city after all? What if I hadn't broken up with XYZ or studied something else? What if I had decided to live without children?

In her novel Im Leben nebenan (Life Next Door), author Anne Sauer takes this fascinating “what if” idea as an exciting starting point and shows, in a dazzling and unsparing way, what two different versions of a life can look like – and how it is possible to find oneself in both versions.

Ambivalent Desire to Have Children

Toni and Jakob live happily in their small flat in the middle of the city. They like their jobs, love their freedom at the weekends, when they like to go to the cinema at midday (so nice and empty!) and lie on the sun-warmed floorboards of their living room for hours chatting. Actually, everything is fine just the way it is. And then, as with so many young couples, at some point the question of children arises.

In Toni's circle, for many, the question is only “when” and not “if”. It's not a fundamental question, just joyful planning for the right moment. The quick, probing glance at her stomach at family gatherings, the comments when she's holding a non-alcoholic beer: “You're not... are you?” and “Can we congratulate you?” While Toni struggles with the idea (“I'm just afraid it will change us. That we won't recognise each other anymore”), her partner Jakob is more open to the idea (“We'd manage it somehow. As a team.”). And so, little by little, a “Why not?” emerges. Just stop using contraception for a while. See what happens.

But nothing happens for a long time. Two years in which the “Why not?” has grown into a strong desire for children in both of them, a tender anticipation of what could be. The disappointment when, after the first positive test, the hope of a growing life soon dies again is monumental.

When Life Takes a Second Turn

This is where the novel cuts to a second film track: Antonia wakes up in a sand-coloured bedroom, a sea of beige tones. A newborn baby lies on her chest, about five weeks old. Next to her is not Jakob, but brown-haired Adam: her first great love.

Chapter by chapter (each chapter appears twice; from now on, we alternate between Toni's and Antonia's lives), we now learn what the protagonist's life would have been like if she had stayed in her home village and Adam had become the father of her child. And we learn how her life continues as a childless woman. How she manages to reorient herself after becoming painfully aware of how unpredictable life can be. It is remarkable how unpretentious, empathetic and non-judgmental the author remains in her descriptions of both lives: happiness can be found both in the smile of an infant and in being alone and free while skinny dipping in the sea.

On the book cover, I read: “Reading Anne Sauer is like watching a series: thrilling and addictive.” And that's exactly how it feels when you switch back and forth between parallel universes. But even though it's tempting to give in to the fast pace of the novel, I don't recommend “binge reading”: those who give their full attention to Im Leben nebenan will be rewarded with vivid, physical and precise language that creates lively images in the mind and maintains the suspense – right up to the last, life-affirming chapter.

March 2026