MixedThe NationWith this novel, something vast shifts underfoot in Erpenbeck’s miniature worlds: the tectonic undertow of geologic time. Visitation adds to her compact scenarios something intangible and enormous, which works on them from outside their modest frames with a force eroding human history and its claims to establish durable meaning ... Because in Visitation Erpenbeck flits between so many stories and perspectives, there is as much room for confusion as mystery ... From the novel’s broad, outside-in perspective, the human lives Erpenbeck takes as her material can grow insectlike, their activities as insignificant as flies in summer. The diminution of the characters places them at a distance from the reader, who cannot at this critical remove feel the causes of their laughter and pleasure, cannot empathize with their physical and emotional pain ... The horrors, disappointments and innocent pleasures that befall these and the fifteen or so other characters—the experiences they are made to watch or take part in—are too often rushed through, shortchanged, sometimes even exploited.
