Such a Lovely Love

Embarrassingly Exact Year of Love

Susanne Zobl, Der Standard 12/15/1995

 

One day she decides to seduce Eugen. "It happened suddenly, and had to be right away. She could not wait one day longer than was necessary." She is Sophie Reuter, forty-seven years old, married, instructor of computer programming at the University of Vienna. and writer of novels. He is Eugen Berg, German, "fifty years old, and professor of mineralogy, or actually crystallography.... He always offered Pez candies from a little Pez machine with Donald Duck on it." He is innocence in person, married since the age of thirty, and father of one daughter. That which happens when two persons of middle-age collide, is, as the title says, "Such a Lovely Love."

Embarrassingly exact, without actually becoming embarrassing, Erdheim records the beginning, highpoint and end of a relationship, which, for better or worse, seems to be predetermined. The prerequisites for a classic affair are ideal: Sophie's husband has accepted a teaching assignment abroad. Eugen, of course, feels that his wife does not understand him.

Although Sophie and Eugen love, eat and fight according to all the rules, this year of love does keep the reader in suspense.

 

An Emotional Time Journey

The narrator relates her story at breathless speed, and thereby misses the right course.. By going backwards, the heroes of mature love are thrown mercilessly back into the time of puberty.

Such a journey goes well only so long as both partners remain at the same height. As soon as one passes the other, they both become adversaries.

Since Eugen obviously has another strong motivation, namely mid-life crises, it is no wonder that for him there is only one thing of importance: proof of his masculine potency.

"I will be emancipated." Such sentences are not Sophie's. They are part of Eugen's repertoire. Sophie leaves her husband without any fuss. But although she loves Eugen and nobody else, he is ultimately focused on another colleague. It is no wonder, then, that his declarations of love turn into hurtfulness.

 

Reminiscence of Woody Allen

Brief, almost hectic dialogues are one of the many strengths of this novel. The innocuousness with which ordinary things are discussed, for example the choice of vinegar for salad, seem almost to be taken from a Woody Allen movie.

In simple sentences, Claudia Erdheim draws the psychogram of a mature woman. That which at the beginning seems a light romance, turns into a sadomasochistic tragedy. Masculine ways of calculation are here triumphant. Erdheim treats her heroine without pity, brings her near the "end", when she can do nothing but write yet another letter to Eugen.

But he keeps backing off in the direction of the other. When, against all expectations, he takes a stance in regard to her letters, it is not without a directed and destructive undertone: "Hello, Sophie. I got your letter. You always write the same thing. You're stereotypical. I've got to go now to review my lecture. See you." It is all too easy for the writer to begin wondering whether it is not only the heroine, but perhaps also the author herself who has been victim of the eternal return of the same. This, however, is probably part of the poetic principle of a novel that deals with the inevitable repetition of things that remain eternally the same.

 

 

Tormented Business

Robert Schediwy, 10/13/1995

 

"Such a Lovely Love". Such a title can only be bitterly ironic, especially if the author is Claudia Erdheim. Sophie Reuter, instructor for electronic data processing, and Eugen Berg, professor of mineralogy, have a burning passion for one another and, despite being around fifty years old, are very deft when it comes to sexual athletics. Sophie, however, is hardly interested in Eugen's stones. Eugen, in contrast, considers Sophie's clothes inelegant, and her books cynical. Moreover, Sophie cannot share Eugen's love for noodles with salad, and finds his habit of stopping while talking during a walk annoying.

And Eugen, himself jealous, is coquettish in his relatively inexperienced sexuality. He is "seducible" by other women, and torments Sophie, who is monogamous by nature, with real or made-up rivals. For both, however, real affection seems rather far-reaching. Apparently, their desires are focused more on being loved than on loving - "almost like in real life". Their relationship, in any case, turns out, once more, to be another one of Pandora's boxes.

At times, one feels compelled to give the protagonists admonitions from previous Erdheim novels. Eugen, for example, has indubitable "fears of closeness", and Sophie "clings", to use terminology from "Heartbreaks", Erdheim's wonderful novel about "therapy scenes".

Perhaps the apparent autobiographic base of this book took too much out of the author. Her usual self-ironic distance and the unmasking sharpness of her dialogic "telegram" prose appear somewhat shaken by sufferings. Nevertheless, and interesting book - and, "local patriots" will be pleased by the unmistakable Viennese background.

 

 

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