The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (1 Viewer)

[jazzeum]

The manuscript for this book was found among Zweig's papers after he committed suicide in 1942 in Brasil.

The Post Office Girl is Christine who lives a desolate life in a small town outside of Vienna in the mid 1920s. Her life is one of unceasing duty to her sick mother. It is a life of never having enough and poverty.

One day she receives an invitation from a rich aunt to join her and her husband in a Swiss resort; the Aunt, who has a bit of a shady past, has done well by marrying a wealthy American broker but has never revealed her past to her husband. Feeling guilty as she has never been in contact with her family or sent them money, she invites Christine for a visit.

Christine finds another world and with the aid of her aunt, she is transformed and becomes the object of many of the well to do men, both young and old, at the resort. Zweig shows this different life formerly unknown to Christine.

Unfortunately for Christine, other young women at the resort are jealous of her new status and she is soon exposed, not as a wealthy socialite, but a girl from a poor background. Her Aunt, worried that her past might be exposed, drops her like a hot potato and sends her home. That is how the first half ends.

The second half opens with Christine back home, where she is now constantly angry and surly. Having tasted the good life, she cannot stomach the life she has to go back to and is miserable. She feels she has been cheated and who can blame her.

Enter Ferdinand. Through her brother in law, she meets this war veteran, who is likewise embittered because before WW I started he was going to be an architect but one of his hands was rendered useless by the war; he has trouble finding any sort of work and lives a hand to mouth existence.

These two kindred souls gravitate to each other but even together their life is desolate and so they decide to commit suicide together. However, at the last second, Ferdinand comes up with a plan to steal the money from the post office where Christine works. They make their plans and at that point the book ends.

The book has, on the one hand, a feeling of incompleteness; perhaps Zweig had not finished it. However, on the other hand, he brilliantly shows the two extremes of absolute wealth and extreme poverty typical of that era. His characters are brilliantly drawn, particularly Christine and the worlds she inhabits. This is a story of people who only want others have but cannot have it and the anger and frustration it creates.

Recommended.

 

[hotel3alpha]

The manuscript for this book was found among Zweig's papers after he committed suicide in 1942 in Brasil.

The Post Office Girl is Christine who lives a desolate life in a small town outside of Vienna in the mid 1920s. Her life is one of unceasing duty to her sick mother. It is a life of never having enough and poverty.

One day she receives an invitation from a rich aunt to join her and her husband in a Swiss resort; the Aunt, who has a bit of a shady past, has done well by marrying a wealthy American broker but has never revealed her past to her husband. Feeling guilty as she has never been in contact with her family or sent them money, she invites Christine for a visit.

Christine finds another world and with the aid of her aunt, she is transformed and becomes the object of many of the well to do men, both young and old, at the resort. Zweig shows this different life formerly unknown to Christine.

Unfortunately for Christine, other young women at the resort are jealous of her new status and she is soon exposed, not as a wealthy socialite, but a girl from a poor background. Her Aunt, worried that her past might be exposed, drops her like a hot potato and sends her home. That is how the first half ends.

The second half opens with Christine back home, where she is now constantly angry and surly. Having tasted the good life, she cannot stomach the life she has to go back to and is miserable. She feels she has been cheated and who can blame her.

Enter Ferdinand. Through her brother in law, she meets this war veteran, who is likewise embittered because before WW I started he was going to be an architect but one of his hands was rendered useless by the war; he has trouble finding any sort of work and lives a hand to mouth existence.

These two kindred souls gravitate to each other but even together their life is desolate and so they decide to commit suicide together. However, at the last second, Ferdinand comes up with a plan to steal the money from the post office where Christine works. They make their plans and at that point the book ends.

The book has, on the one hand, a feeling of incompleteness; perhaps Zweig had not finished it. However, on the other hand, he brilliantly shows the two extremes of absolute wealth and extreme poverty typical of that era. His characters are brilliantly drawn, particularly Christine and the worlds she inhabits. This is a story of people who only want others have but cannot have it and the anger and frustration it creates.

Recommended.

Jazz hit the nail on the head. However, I believe it is more than "Recommended" it is a MUST READ. I read this book on the recommendation of Jazz and I am so glad I read it, err finished it. The story that Zweig weaves here is astronomically intense. Christine (our pitiful main character) has to come to terms with her impoverished, dreadful , and monotonous life when she is invited by her long lost Aunt from America for a vacation in the Alps. This vacation changes her life forever! Whereby, we see Christine dramatically change from the shy, humble niece on her first day of vacation to becoming the toast of the Town by the next day with a new look and "title". Her transformation is egged on my her Aunt who has no idea what she is creating. In fact, her transformation is almost gruesome! In the sense, that she is completely intoxicated by the posh, debonair and money rich people who she (just a day ago!) was in awe of. She is drunk on living lavishly day after day becomes oblivious, even careless as a guest of her Aunt who is flipping the bill for all her (free) indulgences. She believes that this is life she is supposed to have, that she should have and unbeknownst to herself she falls victim to her own naitivite of how the rich live and operate. Plainly, she is not one of them, will never be one of them and is oblivious to the fact that her new rich, elitist friends KNOW she is not one of them. But she carries on in vacation "euphoria" and this is where the story takes a pivotal turn.

I will not spoil the details of the story for you if you happen to read it. The book breaks down in two parts: pre-Christine and post-Christine. However, as a Stefan Zweig fan I wonder if this work is unfinished as there could have been a third book. Albiet, a "posthumous" Christine. I find this book eerily interwoven in the personal drama of Stefan Zweigs own personal life at the time of him writing this book. Particularly, the solemn but hopeful regard of performing the act of suicide. I.E., suicide is a terrible thing, but at last you are free! A very disturbing, but understandably reasonable train of thought for those who have given up in life and are faced with only one option: taking their own lives.

In the end, this posthumously published work is one of those mysteries that will leave us with one of those eternal questions: Was there a part three?

Thanks for the Recommendation Jazz!

John from Texas