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It's hard for me to describe how much I admire this. It's a beautiful, elegiac meditation on time and the whirlwinds of difficult history and the fates of humans caught in it. It's about time, timelessness, and being stripped of time.

A village and nearby forested property on a lake outside Berlin is the protagonist. The story encompasses over one hundred years of German history, from the nineteenth century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath.We see how the land and the house witness the turbulences of history and how the characters, its tenants who seek home here are swept into its tides.

The daughters whose father and prejudices led to tragedies. Jews who had to flee during WWII. The woman and her husband who decided not to have children during the Hitler era, and a woman who never left her possessions to anyone else but other women. The childhood friend who stayed behind, the Russian soldier who caused damage. the communists. The characters who got caught in the division of Germany into east and west. The chapter that hit me the most was the one called the girl.

The novel shows the everyday life of the house, while presenting the fates of its inhabitants. It tears open wounds, dealing with topics such as time, estrangement, death, displacement.

When you’ve arrived, can you still be said to be fleeing? And when you’re fleeing, can you ever arrive?

The language and structure of the novel reflect the confusions and turbulences of each era. She describes customs, surroundings and then all of a sudden brings out the essence and meaning in one single sweep of a sentence.

And in all this is a landscape that never really changes, despite humans and their constant fights, just like the gardener who tends to it.

It's a contemplation on the whirlwind of history, people's fates in it and since characters are mostly nameless, it feels so much more timeless.

Perhaps eternal life already exists during a human lifetime, but since it looks different from what we’re hoping for—something that transcends everything that’s ever happened—since it looks instead like the old life we already knew, no one recognizes it. The house too is still standing there, and he doesn’t know what it is that is still standing. And he himself. And no doubt she as well, somewhere in the world.

You need to pay attention, it's not an easy read, it's descriptive, slow and thoughtful, meditative, but it is a beautiful and affecting read. And one to return to, to read a second time and notice what you missed the first time.

The new world is to devour the old one, the old one puts up a fight, and now new and old are living side by side in a single body. Where much is asked, more is left out.