Winner of Germany's 2018 Leipzig Book Prize, this novel follows an unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, as she travels to a small village southeast of Rome. Seeing, describing, and naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it.
What makes Grove so noteworthy is the keening, perfectly weighted clarity of Kinsky’s prose; Caroline Schmidt’s elegantly considered translation is meticulous but never overstated ... Grove is a story of an existence stilled by loss, but the promise of life, and with it renewal and hope, pulses gently but steadily at its heart.
Poetic and painterly, a meticulously observed contemplation of the world that was, the world that is, and the world that might have been and the boundaries that join and define them ... A philosophical jewel seeking revelation in interstices, absences, ruptures, and the passages between existence and memory.
... an exquisite and elusive diaristic work comprised of entries analogous to a researcher’s field notes ... Her observations of the landscapes are vivid and historicized...but the narrator’s descriptions of people, in particular a portrait of the narrator’s late Italophile father, are the most moving ... To call this a plotless novel would be a misunderstanding: Kinsky is a photographer’s novelist; her prose unravels like a roll of film as visual meditation. The true beauty of this work emerges with patience and contemplation.
