Reviews

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler

Only show reviews with written explanations

sidharthvardhan's review

5.0

"Scars are like years, he said: one follows another and it’s all of them together that make a person who they are."

"My thigh hurts a bit, but that’s all. Now the two of us can limp down to the valley side by side.’
‘No,’ said Egger, and stood up. ‘Every one of us limps alone!'

And that is what this book is. The story of a man limping through his life. His is a life that most of us lead. With a number of uneventful years between two eventful memories. The eventful itself being either something ordinary yet powerful because it touches one personally - wars and accidents, loves and could-have-been-loves, deaths and marriages (the last one - childbirth doesn't occur in story) or something great but that only one experiences from far - like watching men first walk on moon.

And, in between, one lives through years of solitude and work, of delusions and confusions of thinking about one's past - about what was and what could have been. Eggar, our protagonist doesn't succumb down to that third misery of 'what should have been' - and thus finds fulfilment and dignity even in his empty life. Not the life of Avengers or Harry Potter or Doctor Who. And in this case, he did not even have a family for long that he could love and feel loved, couldn't leave his neighborhood except for war and work, did not have the consolation of enjoying arts and books; yet Eggar is not complaining.