Review

Mrs Sartoris

By Elke Schmitter

Published by Faber

Margarethe Sartoris is a striking woman in her 40s. She lives with her mother-in-law, her husband (the solid, dependable and dull Ernst) and her teenage daughter, with whom she has little, if anything, in common.

Her life with Ernst in a German provincial town follows a predictable pattern: they attend drinks parties, sing in a choir, and play bowls. Her office job keeps her busy, but she can do it in her sleep. In short, she is bored, living a mundane half-existence.

When she begins an affair with the head of the town’s department of culture, she is released from this torpor. A cold-blooded, but passionate desire courses through her, ultimately with shattering consequences.

Margarethe’s cool narration of her story, from the betrayal of the young man she was expecting to marry at the age of eighteen to her drift into marriage with Ernst and ultimately her affair, is almost icy in its matter-of-factness, but this makes the strange twilight world of boredom she inhabits all the more disturbing. Schmitter has admitted the debt she owes to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and there is certainly something of Emma’s recklessness about Margarethe.

Mrs Sartoris is a controlled and moving novel which offers no happy conclusions or cheerful denouement, but is recognisably a true reflection of a very human malaise and all the more powerful for that.

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor

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Translator: Carol Brown Janeway