The Wall
By: Marlen Haushofer / Narrated By: Kathe Mazur
Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
Almost five years past my review on Audible, the listen this time? WOW…!
The first time I started The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, I danged near didn't finish it; it was, after all, a verrry slow moving, introspective work and dang it if it wasn’t laced with the out and out, the absolutely and unutterably tragic! I mean, at just over 9 hours, was I prepared to slog through, having my tender heart trashed by some truly incredible writing, some deeply heartfelt prose?
It was the love that kept me going… what can I tell ya, I’m a sucker for that.
And here, nearly five years after I listened to the audiobook and reviewed it that first time, I stand at a place in my life where losses have continued (It IS Life, after all; it continues no matter what), and tho’ I can’t say that I’m wiiiiiser? I can say that my heart knows what matters even more than it did five years ago. This story’ll make you think, make you look around yourself in gratitude, make you oh so grateful for the tremendous pain that comes to your life. Because love brings pain, and isn’t that the greatest thing you could’ve ever had in your life: Wonderful, wondrous Love?
Written in the 60s, long before Stephen King had the concept of a dome, Haushofer delivers a story wherein a woman on vacation, wakes up one day to find herself enclosed, cut off from the rest of the world, by an invisible wall. What she sees on the other side, is death, and no one comes to rescue her; all is still, all is silent. And she wonders if this is a military experiment that went awry, or that went too terribly well; she’s not sure. All she is sure about is that those she loves, her children, her friends, are most likely dead.
And so begins her journaling of each day in this new existence; we never know her name as she’s realized it really doesn’t matter: Nobody, ever again, will be using it for her, and what good is such a farcical label as a name? What does matter is that a dog was left behind on her side of the Wall, an ornery cat comes calling also (And she learns to trust and to give comfort), and a cow is found lowing and wandering, crying for comfort. Her world suddenly has purpose, she has company and friendship with these creatures; her days evolve into parsing out and raising foodstuffs, into doling out what she has to her little friends and fellow journeyers.
This coooould be an entirely boring book, but interspersed throughout it are truly incredible observations and hard-won realizations. She’s become careworn, but who, really, has ever valued such shallow things as a face, their looks? More important is when her legs ache from hard work, keeping her from the day to day labor that gives each sunrise weight and a purpose.
No, what matters in this new world of Nature, of Nature’s beauty, of Nature’s incredible harshness, is the love she has within each day, within each moment. This is a book, if you’re a lover of Animals but only love the Happy Ending, that will break you and shake you to your core. The woman spares nothing in what she gives to her companions, and though she tries hard to stay unattached, knowing how Nature doesn’t care, that there’s a Circle to Life, she gives wholly from her heart anyway, succumbing to the nearness, the dearness, of every creature’s personality and to just how much they add to her life.
Ignore reviews that call this a big ol’ tract on “eco-feminism”—just because Nature rules the day (And truly, look at what we’re going through now with the coronavirus: If Nature’s not getting a word or two in at this current moment, I dunno WHAT all is happening!), and just because this is a woman who discovers her strength as she survives and even thrives, does NOT mean you’ll be beaten about the head and neck with “Feminist” ideology. Jiminy H. Cricket, this book is a story about love, grief, striving, failing, having gratitude for what’s around you. I do NOT believe that makes it a certain kind of story one way or the other; it just makes it a danged good one.
Kathe Mazur WOWed the heck outta me with her narration here (Just as she did in the other book, Ashley’s War, we have here in Audiobook Accomplice). The warmth her searingly emotional voice brings makes most of the book utterly gut wrenching at times, supremely loving and grateful at others. This is the point where I should, however, note that due to how slowly the story unfolds to bare its heart and soul, I jacked up my x1.25 speed to x1.5. Call it an inability to Delay Gratification if you want, but I just could NOT bear to have all the written foreboding held off for too long (No spoilers: The woman suffers a GREAT loss which she repeatedly alludes to…).
So all in all, when the greatest of losses occur, after all the losses that occurred throughout the book… WHY isn’t this a brutal and depressing Listen?
Well, I just have to get back to what I said earlier, to what I know now, five years on, many loves now gone from my life, a heart repeatedly broken:
Dang it all if these dratted fragile hearts of ours, which NEVER mend, don’t keep beating. And dang it all if these dratted fragile hearts of ours, don’t start skipping beats when hope comes round the corner, when new love, when new life, appear, just a hairsbreadth away, waiting to be touched, waiting to be held, waiting to be welcomed with hesitant but oh so open arms…
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