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chaotic_wholesome's review
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Wanted to love this, as the Strasbourg meandering, and the layers of stories about and coincidences in the city are intoxicating. You can understand why the protagonist loses herself in it. But the emotional alienation was just too alienating. Maybe that's the point, and that would be fair if I felt like I'd gained some insight into the human condition through my discomfort and frustration.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
emilybh's review against another edition
3.0
‘This world was constructed from objects and knick-knacks fallen from a flowing slipstream of time ... gathered on the shoreline of those tables.’
.
This is a strange and unsettling book in which the narrator avoids confronting her father’s death in London by remaining in Strasbourg over the winter alone. She abandons her new job and instead researches the city and its ghosts, ‘seeking the stories of strangers and the past’. Scovell is an interesting writer, and although the novel is exactly the mix of history, place and identity that I love, and I enjoyed many passages, overall I found its tone and the lack of backstory given to its narrator dissatisfying.
.
This is a strange and unsettling book in which the narrator avoids confronting her father’s death in London by remaining in Strasbourg over the winter alone. She abandons her new job and instead researches the city and its ghosts, ‘seeking the stories of strangers and the past’. Scovell is an interesting writer, and although the novel is exactly the mix of history, place and identity that I love, and I enjoyed many passages, overall I found its tone and the lack of backstory given to its narrator dissatisfying.
inciminci's review against another edition
4.0
To tell the truth, the only reason I picked up this book was that I was thinking it is a horror novel featuring the Erlkönig. Having lived in that general area of the French-Belgian-German border for about a decade and being thoroughly depressed of it (especially in winter time), the last thing I wanted to do was to read a collection of impressions, of historical bits and facts of that geography that depressed me so... I was in for a shock when I realized Erlkönig is but a symbol, a metaphore for something else and not what the book was all about (well, in a certain sense the book may be about him too, but not only). BUT I found that once you are able to succumb to the very slow pace and rhythm of this book, you actually start following the depressive mood, but also the serenity and distraction the protagonist finds in her surroundings. Finished it yesterday and will definitely move to other books by Scovell.
thebobsphere's review
4.0
Adam Scovell is a filmmaker and one can see that when reading How Pale the Winter has made Us. There’s a cinematic technique in the way certain scenes are described. I kept imagining long tracking shots, silences and symbols appearing frequently. How Pale.. also has a pretty complex plot that would translate well in a visual context.
While in Strasbourg visiting her partner, Isabelle finds out that her father has committed suicide. Rather than go back Isabelle then starts to uncover Strasbourg’s history, mainly through the figures of Gutenberg, Goethe and Jean Arp. As she delves deeper into their personal lives and their connections with Strasbourg, Isabelle discovers that in an odd way these people are connected to her father, thus she is uncovering the history of a city while exploring her father’s history and her personal history. On the surface we get the impression that Isabelle is procrastinating her family visit but in reality she’s going exploring it deeply.
Scovell likes to layer the plot, details such as Kugelhopf, statues and photographs can easily lead to more details/trivia and as this happens, the narrative expands but it’s all done in an uncomplicated way. Although there may seem to be deviations – a couple of pages are about the botanist Robert Keller – everything is linked intelligently and after the first few pages the reader is caught up in Isabelle’s search, whether it’s for a piece of glass that Gutenberg had or a the meaning of an online article Isabelle discovers. We know that they are connected and it is interesting to see how she manages to do it.
Although the prose is economical there is a lot going on, despite being based in reality, there’s a fantastical element with a fairy-king, which is also connected to Isabelle’s father’s suicide. To further add richness to the text there are a number of photographs within the book.
How Pale the Winter has Made Us is able to do two things. One is to make the reader think and the other is to have fun while figuring out how the book will progress. It’s not easy to pull it off but Scovell manages with aplomb.
Many thanks to Influx for providing a copy of How Pale the Winter has Made Us in exchange for an honest review.
While in Strasbourg visiting her partner, Isabelle finds out that her father has committed suicide. Rather than go back Isabelle then starts to uncover Strasbourg’s history, mainly through the figures of Gutenberg, Goethe and Jean Arp. As she delves deeper into their personal lives and their connections with Strasbourg, Isabelle discovers that in an odd way these people are connected to her father, thus she is uncovering the history of a city while exploring her father’s history and her personal history. On the surface we get the impression that Isabelle is procrastinating her family visit but in reality she’s going exploring it deeply.
Scovell likes to layer the plot, details such as Kugelhopf, statues and photographs can easily lead to more details/trivia and as this happens, the narrative expands but it’s all done in an uncomplicated way. Although there may seem to be deviations – a couple of pages are about the botanist Robert Keller – everything is linked intelligently and after the first few pages the reader is caught up in Isabelle’s search, whether it’s for a piece of glass that Gutenberg had or a the meaning of an online article Isabelle discovers. We know that they are connected and it is interesting to see how she manages to do it.
Although the prose is economical there is a lot going on, despite being based in reality, there’s a fantastical element with a fairy-king, which is also connected to Isabelle’s father’s suicide. To further add richness to the text there are a number of photographs within the book.
How Pale the Winter has Made Us is able to do two things. One is to make the reader think and the other is to have fun while figuring out how the book will progress. It’s not easy to pull it off but Scovell manages with aplomb.
Many thanks to Influx for providing a copy of How Pale the Winter has Made Us in exchange for an honest review.
lonesomereader's review
4.0
Sometimes when staying in a foreign city the physical estrangement you feel from your homeland can match your mental state. “How Pale the Winter Has Made Us” opens with its English narrator Isabelle learning that her father has committed suicide in Crystal Palace, London. She’s been staying in Strasbourg with her partner who has recently flown to South America for an extended trip to pursue his medical work. A typical response to such news would be for Isabelle to immediately fly home to England to attend the funeral and be with her remaining family. But instead she chooses to stay in her partner’s empty flat and roam the streets of Strasbourg researching the lives of people who’ve been memorialised in the city’s statues, museums, literature and photos found in the stalls of street vendors. She finds that “Grief does strange and terrible things to the mind; rationality disintegrates into the air.”
We only receive snippets of her own personal history with her family and partner, but these relationships are certainly strained. Amidst long passages of research there occasionally appear italicised hate-filled accusations from her mother (who she refers to as a “harridan”) which might be real messages, memories or entirely imagined. Occasional recollections of her father and his single-minded pursuit of painting are steeped in resentment. But throughout most of the narrative Isabelle blocks the intrusion of personal details in favour of her research. This process of consciously alienating herself from the reality back home and immersing herself in fragments from history is a way of avoiding the immediacy of emotion and searching for a way to centre herself again. As we follow her intellectual journey over the course of winter we witness an individual’s disintegration of self alongside the spectral resurrection of a city’s history.
Read my full review of How Pale the Winter Has Made Us by Adam Scovell on LonesomeReader
We only receive snippets of her own personal history with her family and partner, but these relationships are certainly strained. Amidst long passages of research there occasionally appear italicised hate-filled accusations from her mother (who she refers to as a “harridan”) which might be real messages, memories or entirely imagined. Occasional recollections of her father and his single-minded pursuit of painting are steeped in resentment. But throughout most of the narrative Isabelle blocks the intrusion of personal details in favour of her research. This process of consciously alienating herself from the reality back home and immersing herself in fragments from history is a way of avoiding the immediacy of emotion and searching for a way to centre herself again. As we follow her intellectual journey over the course of winter we witness an individual’s disintegration of self alongside the spectral resurrection of a city’s history.
Read my full review of How Pale the Winter Has Made Us by Adam Scovell on LonesomeReader
arirang's review
4.0
Strasbourg lay all around me, familiar streets with cobbles, old buildings constructed in a mixture of styles, most of them incredibly preserved considering the many conflicts that had befallen the city over the years. My eyes, yet to be slashed in dismay, stared out of the window at the small groups of wandering tourists, who were thankfully blind to the Erl-King.
How Pale The Winter Has Made Us is the second novel from writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell. His first, Mothlight was also an excellent read my review) heavily influenced by the two greatest post war German language writers, Thomas Bernhard and WG Sebald:
The influence of both writers is clear again here, although for this specific novel, the author has said, in his discussion of the book, that its three real pillars of influence were Georges Perec’s [b:Life: A User's Manual|28293|Life A User's Manual|Georges Perec|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416690677l/28293._SY75_.jpg|1953902], Elfriede Jelinek’s [b:The Piano Teacher|219879|The Piano Teacher|Elfriede Jelinek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328823912l/219879._SY75_.jpg|2179325] and Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession the last a cult movie (NSFW trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTB15PPtMyA_).
How Pale The Winter Has Made Us is narrated by Isabelle, a young English woman staying in Strasbourg with her partner, although to the reader she seems more in love with the city than him (he seemed to have an aversion to things I found interesting).
He has just left for an extended trip to South America, and she is about to return to South London, when she learns of the death, by suicide, of her father, whom I had admittedly hated, which is delivered in the most deliberately blunt and uncaring fashion by my spiteful mother.
Immediately she finds herself beset by visions of a lurking, shadowy figure, which she later identifies as the Erl-King, or Erlkönig in German. From Wikipedia:
With her harridan mother (the adjective qualifies the noun so often in Isabelle's account that it almost becomes an official title) urging her to return home immediately to take care of the will, and funeral, she decides instead to stay in France:
Strasbourg was to be my island upon which to explore and seek refuge: to lose myself in the arms of the Erl-King. Anything to avoid the responsibility of such paperwork.
The gothic horror element of the novel, inspired by Possession, has Isabelle being nocturnally carnally possessed by the Erl-King, although this forms more of a background to the novel.
The foreground is the city of Strasbourg and the history of those who have lived there, including Goethe and Herder. As noted before Sebald is perhaps Scovell’s key influence and in a recent article on WG Sebald he notes:
This book is Sebaldian both in its style, but also its use of evocative, often melancholic, sepia and black and white photographs (people often looked unhappy in older photos, as if the process of having it taken was still something suspicious, something to be cautious of.), which Isabelle, like the author himself, acquires in Strasbourg’s flea markets and curio shops. Some are included in the text, more can be found at a specially created Instagram account.
Interestingly the reason the photographs are not all in the novel is (from Granta interview below) is to partly shake off the ghost of Sebald:
Most of the other tables and stalls had boxes of old photographs too, but Brice’s table had just this one, half hidden under the paperweight like a secret. It was an old picture, black and white when it was first produced but now rendered coffee-coloured by the passing of time. In the picture there sat a well-dressed man on a chair. It seemed unusual as the chair was clearly designed for indoor use and yet the picture was outside. The sitter had perhaps thought that it was a good idea for this portrait to be taken in the garden, and I imagined his pompous hassling of those around him as a chair was fetched from some great French house and sat on the grass of a large, expansive garden.
Her exploration of the city proceeds rather by chance based on the photographs she finds and conversations she has - the seller of the first photographs tells her the story behind it - and a chain of chance discoveries (*), the author noting the inspiration here of another film, Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance.
(* Isabelle is, it has to be said, an unworldly character at times. One such coincidence comes when after viewing The Matterhorn disaster by Gustave Doré, she, to her spooked astonishment, finds the same mountain pictueed on an unusually shaped bar of Swiss chocolate in a tabac: that would be a Toblerone then, denizen of duty free shops the world over as well as most confectionary stores.)
But she is always haunted, literally, at least in her mind, by the figure of the Erl-King, and figuratively by thoughts of her father’s death, to which she often reaches by way of comparison to an excessive extent.
Recommended. And I look forward to the third volume of what, with Mothlight and this, will form a thematic trilogy:
Granta
The Republic of Consciousness blog
How Pale The Winter Has Made Us is the second novel from writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell. His first, Mothlight was also an excellent read my review) heavily influenced by the two greatest post war German language writers, Thomas Bernhard and WG Sebald:
I think the majority of the voice techniques come from European fiction of the post-war period. Sebald was and always will be the biggest influence on my writing, but the main voice that dictated the OCD recursions in Mothlight was Thomas Bernhard.Both novels are from small independent Influx Press, 'committed to publishing innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK and beyond’ and the winner, with Eley Williams’s stunning [b:Attrib. and other stories|33656486|Attrib. and other stories|Eley Williams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1483286761l/33656486._SY75_.jpg|54524159], of the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize, which I had the pleasure to judge. This book came courtesy of the Prize’s excellent bookclub.
The influence of both writers is clear again here, although for this specific novel, the author has said, in his discussion of the book, that its three real pillars of influence were Georges Perec’s [b:Life: A User's Manual|28293|Life A User's Manual|Georges Perec|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416690677l/28293._SY75_.jpg|1953902], Elfriede Jelinek’s [b:The Piano Teacher|219879|The Piano Teacher|Elfriede Jelinek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328823912l/219879._SY75_.jpg|2179325] and Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession the last a cult movie (NSFW trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTB15PPtMyA_).
How Pale The Winter Has Made Us is narrated by Isabelle, a young English woman staying in Strasbourg with her partner, although to the reader she seems more in love with the city than him (he seemed to have an aversion to things I found interesting).
He has just left for an extended trip to South America, and she is about to return to South London, when she learns of the death, by suicide, of her father, whom I had admittedly hated, which is delivered in the most deliberately blunt and uncaring fashion by my spiteful mother.
Immediately she finds herself beset by visions of a lurking, shadowy figure, which she later identifies as the Erl-King, or Erlkönig in German. From Wikipedia:
The name is first used by Johann Gottfried Herder in his ballad "Erlkönigs Tochter" (1778), an adaptation of the Danish Hr. Oluf han rider (1739), and was taken up by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his poem "Erlkönig" (1782).Indeed, the novel’s title indeed is inspired by a line of Herder’s poem: Wie ist dein’ Farbe blaß und bleich?
With her harridan mother (the adjective qualifies the noun so often in Isabelle's account that it almost becomes an official title) urging her to return home immediately to take care of the will, and funeral, she decides instead to stay in France:
Strasbourg was to be my island upon which to explore and seek refuge: to lose myself in the arms of the Erl-King. Anything to avoid the responsibility of such paperwork.
The gothic horror element of the novel, inspired by Possession, has Isabelle being nocturnally carnally possessed by the Erl-King, although this forms more of a background to the novel.
The foreground is the city of Strasbourg and the history of those who have lived there, including Goethe and Herder. As noted before Sebald is perhaps Scovell’s key influence and in a recent article on WG Sebald he notes:
With place occupying a key role in his novels, to the extent that several of them can be literally walked and explored in the same detail as the books’ various narrators, the writer unconsciously created journeys and highlighted places that now sit unusually within what could be called the “Sebaldian.”In another article Scovell takes the same approach to Thomas Bernhard's Vienna.
This book is Sebaldian both in its style, but also its use of evocative, often melancholic, sepia and black and white photographs (people often looked unhappy in older photos, as if the process of having it taken was still something suspicious, something to be cautious of.), which Isabelle, like the author himself, acquires in Strasbourg’s flea markets and curio shops. Some are included in the text, more can be found at a specially created Instagram account.
Interestingly the reason the photographs are not all in the novel is (from Granta interview below) is to partly shake off the ghost of Sebald:
I started with around forty photographs I’d picked up from stalls around the flea markets of Strasbourg, and, as they were all of old Europe, they already had a Sebaldian flavour of sorts. I have mostly removed them to avoid the comparisonThe first is one the narrator herself discovers on a flea market stall just after she has learned of her father’s death:
Most of the other tables and stalls had boxes of old photographs too, but Brice’s table had just this one, half hidden under the paperweight like a secret. It was an old picture, black and white when it was first produced but now rendered coffee-coloured by the passing of time. In the picture there sat a well-dressed man on a chair. It seemed unusual as the chair was clearly designed for indoor use and yet the picture was outside. The sitter had perhaps thought that it was a good idea for this portrait to be taken in the garden, and I imagined his pompous hassling of those around him as a chair was fetched from some great French house and sat on the grass of a large, expansive garden.
Her exploration of the city proceeds rather by chance based on the photographs she finds and conversations she has - the seller of the first photographs tells her the story behind it - and a chain of chance discoveries (*), the author noting the inspiration here of another film, Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance.
(* Isabelle is, it has to be said, an unworldly character at times. One such coincidence comes when after viewing The Matterhorn disaster by Gustave Doré, she, to her spooked astonishment, finds the same mountain pictueed on an unusually shaped bar of Swiss chocolate in a tabac: that would be a Toblerone then, denizen of duty free shops the world over as well as most confectionary stores.)
But she is always haunted, literally, at least in her mind, by the figure of the Erl-King, and figuratively by thoughts of her father’s death, to which she often reaches by way of comparison to an excessive extent.
Recommended. And I look forward to the third volume of what, with Mothlight and this, will form a thematic trilogy:
For reference, the follow-up to How Pale The Winter Has Made Us (due in 2022…) has a narrator actually taking the photos featured, so a healthy trilogy of novels using different techniques of photographic contexts will hopefully be the end point here.Two illuminating interviews with the author:
Granta
The Republic of Consciousness blog
jackielaw's review
4.0
Strasbourg’s historic city centre, the Grande Île (Grand Island), was classified a World Heritage Site in 1988. The city sits on the border, formed by the River Rhine, between France and Germany. Over many years it has come under both countries’ jurisdictions but is currently French. It is the official seat of the European Parliament. It has a long history of excellence in higher-education with its university boasting many famous alumni including nineteen Nobel Laureates.
How Pale the Winter Has Made Us, by Adam Scovell, is set in Strasbourg and the place is as strong a character as any of the people the author has created. Narrated by Isabelle, an English academic, it opens a few days after her partner, who she had been staying with for several weeks, sets off to travel in South America. Isabelle has imminent plans to return to England where she is to take up a hard won post at her university. Alone in her partner’s flat she receives news that her father has committed suicide, hanging himself from a tree in Crystal Palace. Isabelle was not close to either of her parents – the failed artist father and the harridan mother – but finds herself haunted by grief in the form of a shadowy and threatening figure, the Erl-King.
Ignoring all attempts to communicate, including emails and texts from her mother and employer, Isabelle sets out to map aspects of the history of Strasbourg from the perspective of its famous inhabitants – including Gutenberg, Goethe and Jean-Hans Arp. She offers no explanation for her behaviour, suppressing any feelings of responsibility. The reader may ponder if her reaction is driven by innate self-destruction or self-preservation.
Isabelle chooses the subjects of her research from statues she passes when out wandering the streets, or plaques she spots on the walls of historic buildings. She visits coffee shops and mines the internet, hiding out in her partner’s flat that she has not, after all, vacated. She talks to street vendors, the homeless, and strangers she encounters who show an interest in the tokens she accumulates – photographs, postcards and examples of writer’s work. She immerses herself in this research in an attempt to block out thoughts of her dead father, hanging from a tree. Her mother’s cruel jibes relentlessly seep in – resentment at being sidelined by her child, attributing blame even for existing along with dereliction of perceived duty.
The narrative has a sense of dislocation. Isabelle is trying to piece together aspects of Strasbourg’s history as she herself gradually fragments. In stepping off life’s conveyor belt she chooses isolation but cannot quite escape the haunting knowledge and memories. Through the months of winter she sinks into grief, shrinking and fading as her research builds.
The writing is elusive in places but also an appreciative evocation of the city. The urban landscape, culture and people are portrayed with an eye to what is often overlooked by tourists. Amidst the bleakness of Isabelle’s internal trajectory, there is colour in the language, such as when Isabelle is book shopping:
“I picked each volume up, noticing the beautiful texture of the paper used for many of their covers; as if the book had just been printed in the back room of the shop and left out like freshly baked bread.”
Jarring comments from Isabelle’s mother are interspersed with Isabelle’s personal reflections – an effective device for showing how the most hurtful words cannot be unheard. There are also reproductions of certain photographs Isabelle collects, those that prompted her to research the circumstances of the moment captured. These include intersections between people – the successful and the frustrated – and art in its many incarnations.
My early impressions of this book were that it was a slow burn as I sought to connect with its voice. The further in I went the more I realised I was chasing a shadowy spirit, one with haunting potential. Alongside the history of Strasbourg – which may well make readers wish to visit – is a study of grief in a family lacking mutual respect and support. That none of this is presented plainly makes the unwrapping of meaning more rewarding. A poignant, intriguing and ultimately satisfying read.
How Pale the Winter Has Made Us, by Adam Scovell, is set in Strasbourg and the place is as strong a character as any of the people the author has created. Narrated by Isabelle, an English academic, it opens a few days after her partner, who she had been staying with for several weeks, sets off to travel in South America. Isabelle has imminent plans to return to England where she is to take up a hard won post at her university. Alone in her partner’s flat she receives news that her father has committed suicide, hanging himself from a tree in Crystal Palace. Isabelle was not close to either of her parents – the failed artist father and the harridan mother – but finds herself haunted by grief in the form of a shadowy and threatening figure, the Erl-King.
Ignoring all attempts to communicate, including emails and texts from her mother and employer, Isabelle sets out to map aspects of the history of Strasbourg from the perspective of its famous inhabitants – including Gutenberg, Goethe and Jean-Hans Arp. She offers no explanation for her behaviour, suppressing any feelings of responsibility. The reader may ponder if her reaction is driven by innate self-destruction or self-preservation.
Isabelle chooses the subjects of her research from statues she passes when out wandering the streets, or plaques she spots on the walls of historic buildings. She visits coffee shops and mines the internet, hiding out in her partner’s flat that she has not, after all, vacated. She talks to street vendors, the homeless, and strangers she encounters who show an interest in the tokens she accumulates – photographs, postcards and examples of writer’s work. She immerses herself in this research in an attempt to block out thoughts of her dead father, hanging from a tree. Her mother’s cruel jibes relentlessly seep in – resentment at being sidelined by her child, attributing blame even for existing along with dereliction of perceived duty.
The narrative has a sense of dislocation. Isabelle is trying to piece together aspects of Strasbourg’s history as she herself gradually fragments. In stepping off life’s conveyor belt she chooses isolation but cannot quite escape the haunting knowledge and memories. Through the months of winter she sinks into grief, shrinking and fading as her research builds.
The writing is elusive in places but also an appreciative evocation of the city. The urban landscape, culture and people are portrayed with an eye to what is often overlooked by tourists. Amidst the bleakness of Isabelle’s internal trajectory, there is colour in the language, such as when Isabelle is book shopping:
“I picked each volume up, noticing the beautiful texture of the paper used for many of their covers; as if the book had just been printed in the back room of the shop and left out like freshly baked bread.”
Jarring comments from Isabelle’s mother are interspersed with Isabelle’s personal reflections – an effective device for showing how the most hurtful words cannot be unheard. There are also reproductions of certain photographs Isabelle collects, those that prompted her to research the circumstances of the moment captured. These include intersections between people – the successful and the frustrated – and art in its many incarnations.
My early impressions of this book were that it was a slow burn as I sought to connect with its voice. The further in I went the more I realised I was chasing a shadowy spirit, one with haunting potential. Alongside the history of Strasbourg – which may well make readers wish to visit – is a study of grief in a family lacking mutual respect and support. That none of this is presented plainly makes the unwrapping of meaning more rewarding. A poignant, intriguing and ultimately satisfying read.
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