A review by latebutcoming
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

5.0

More than anything, THE PIANO TEACHER is about the yawning gap between two things: youth and age, man and woman, art and ambition, fantasy and actualization. Between these things, over that gap, is a landbridge that requires traversing. If you can meet in the middle, there's something like understanding. I'm reminded of Marina Abramović's "Great Wall" walk where she and her lover walked the entire length of the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, greeting each other finally with an embrace--the treacherous reality of what it takes to truly join two separate things. The only thing that can make this union possible is the existence of love, and a shared investment in that love. Without it, somewhere on that landbridge between two solid things, you'll drown, you'll become lost, or you'll be consumed. By the end of THE PIANO TEACHER--an unwalkable passage between differences--Erika Kohut and Walter Klemmer are both consumed. An ending is coming, for all of us, no matter what. "...if something lasts and lasts, it eventually erupts." A knife stuck in the shoulder is as good an ending as marriage, or love, or happiness. And for some of us, that's as good an ending as we'll ever get.

THE PIANO TEACHER film by Michael Haneke is one of my favorite films of all time. I am so happy to have finally read this book, an even more brutal and pummeling text than its adaptation. Haneke distills and organizes the essence of this book into a stark, chilling portrait of Erika that retains her spirit. I am now going to die :)