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** spoiler alert ** when there is an author i'm interested in, i frequently FREQUENTLY make the mistake of ignoring the books that friends and the rest of the world recommend to me as his/her "best work" and feel some godawful obligation to go into his/her back catalogue and starting reading them from the earliest work onward - or, in this case, the earliest novel available in translation. what a disaster. this book took me much longer to force myself through than anything in recent memory. above all, i blame the translation. i think i would have had better luck putting the original text through google translate. from what i understand, Mueller writes in a clipped, lyrical, impressionistic/imagistic style that borders on prose poem, but this just felt like a boring nightmare. i'm pretty sure any nuances or double-resonances woven into the original German were completely abandoned here. the result is a a clunky, hideous, needlessly obtuse read. to be honest, i'm quite saddened, because i was really hoping to love the author. though i suppose there's still hope. at some point i'll get to The Land of Green Plums and The Hunger Angel, but i think i need a bit of distance from this slow trauma. note to self: just read the book that the rest of the world tells you to read first.