I finished The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig last night and the first words out of my mouth were “wow.” I didn’t expect that ending at all but it was perfect and has made me think constantly about the characters as I went about my day today. What did I think happened afterward? There are so many scenarios I can envision but let me start at the beginning so you’ll know what this book is about.

Christine Hoflehner lives in a small town in Austria and works for the post office. Every day it’s the same, work to make a meager living, take care of her invalid mother and live with nothing to look forward to. The Great War has left the family without some of their family members, without money and without dreams.

It seems that all around life is the same for everyone in the small town. Every thing is regimented and Christine’s days all fall into a pattern.

“Her hand with its pale fingers will raise and lower the same rattly wicket thousands upon thousands of times more, will toss hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of letters onto the canceling desk with the same swiveling motion, will slam the blackened brass canceler onto hundreds of thousands or millions of stamps with the same brief thump. Probably the wrist will even learn to function better and better, ever more mechanically and unconsciously, detached more and more completely from the conscious self. The hundreds of thousands of letters will always be different letters, but always letters. The stamps different stamps, but always stamps. The days different, but each one lasting from eight o’clock until noon, as the years come and go, always the same, the same, the same.”

Can’t you just feel the desperation at the monotony? Christine’s fortune is about to change though when she receives a telegram from her aunt, who due to a scandal had left the country and stayed out of touch for many years. Aunt Claire is now married to a wealthy man and as they take their vacation in the Swiss Alps they invite Christine to join them.

At first the young woman is a bit hesitant to go but upon arrival and after she is taken under her aunt’s wing, and is shown how to dress and how to live a different kind of lifestyle, a new Christine begins to emerge, a confident young woman who is finally living life.

“In her giddiness, unable to imagine that everyone isn’t burning with enthusiasm, isn’t in a fever of high spirits, of passionate delight, she’s lost her sense of balance. She’s discovered herself for the first time in twenty-eight years, and the discovery is so intoxicating that she’s forgetting everyone else.”

Unfortunately Christine’s newfound exuberance will be cut short. A bit of vile gossip and before she knows it, she’s back in her old life. But having tasted something new and so wonderful will only make her former existence even more unbearable to endure. The second part of the story is filled with all the hopelessness and bitterness that fill Christine’s thoughts but strangely this doesn’t feel like a depressive story. What happens next is that there is quite a bit of suspense as Christine meets a young man who is also filled with the same kind of desperation she feels and their lives will take some unexpected turns.

I really loved this story for the writer’s ability to capture such highs and lows in the characters and for giving us a picture of what Europe must have been like for many people after the Great War.

The Slaves of Golconda are discussing this book now so feel free to drop by and see what everyone else thought. I do have to say that in the couple of years that we’ve had this online book discussion group going on we’ve read some amazing literature and every year at least one of the Slaves’ choices ends up on my Favorites of the Year list. I’m sure this book will be on it for ’09.

Yes, you know what April is. It’s National Poetry Month! I meant to post tonight about the book for discussion but I was sidetracked by bookbinding today so I didn’t finish the book but I promise I’ll finish it tonight and post soon.

So back to National Poetry Month. You know what makes me so excited about this? It’s a chance to get everyone talking about poetry, maybe finding some local poetry slams and hopefully discovering more new poets.

There are tons of resources on the Poets.org site where you can even sign up to have a poem delivered to your inbox daily. You can also check out Poetry Daily to read a poem a day. And for those of you who enjoy children’s poetry, thanks to Gentle Reader, I found out about 30 Poets/30 Days. It looks like a wonderful project so be sure to check it out along with the others.

So do you have plans to celebrate? I am planning to read The Captain’s Verses by Pablo Neruda. I’ve read a poem here and there from this book but this month I plan to read the whole book. Plus, it’s also one of my challenge reads. And, I’m sure to read more poems by some of my favorite poets like Billy Collins, Sandra Cisneros, Linda Pastan, Mary Oliver and many more. Who are some of your favorites? Tell me, I want to add more names to my list.

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was wonderful, I went to two bookstores (yay) but believe it or not, I didn’t buy anything. I wish I could say the same for the husband. heh.

I did spend quite a bit of time reading but I didn’t get to most of the books in my previous picture post, aside from When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I’m loving that book. I did start a very good mystery, The Last Kashmiri Rose by Beverly Cleverly. This is one of those books that I’d been meaning to get to for a long time and so far I can say it was well-worth the wait but more on it later.

Most of the weekend I spent it reading The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. It’s a wonderful character study about a woman who has been living a dreary life after the war and once she gets a chance at a week full of pleasure, riches and so on she “awakens”. Of course she has to go back to her real life of work and pinching pennies and well, you can only imagine how that must make her feel. I’m hoping to finish this book just in time for The Slaves of Golconda discussion on Tuesday so feel free to drop in on the conversation and hear more about the book or if you’ve read it then share your thoughts.

So that’s about it on the reading front for me but I had to leave you with some very cool links I’ve recently found.

• Did you know that only about 3% of all books published in the U.S. are works in translation? Well, boost your knowledge of foreign literature by checking out Three Percent.
• Want to know what the 25 most influential books of the past 25 years are? Check out the March/April issue of Mental Floss magazine. I see some Atwood, Morrison and Murakami.
• Remember covering your schoolbooks with kraft paper? Well, thanks to Book City Jackets you can do that again but with a bit more style. Right now they only have Fiction, Favorite and Non-Fiction. I think Poetry should be next given that National Poetry Month is just around the corner don’t you think?