Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
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Review
It's very moving, and it's incredibly funny ... I wasn't prepared for the wit. Stupendous on so many levels (Matt Wolff )
A stunningly moving, beautiful, witty and urbane novel: I was blown away by it. A wonderful translation (Kate Saunders )
A stunningly moving, beautiful, witty and urbane novel: I was blown away by it. A wonderful translation (Kate Saunders )
Product Description
Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation. But years later, when Effi has almost forgotten her affair, the secret returns to haunt her, with fatal consequences. Considered to be Fontane's greatest novel, Effi Briest is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.
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First Sentence
To the front of Hohen-Cremmen, country seat of the von Briest family since the time of Elector Georg Wilhelm, bright sunshine fell on the midday silence in the village street, while on the side facing the park and gardens a wing built on at right angles cast its broad shadow first on a white and green flagstone path, then out over a large roundel of flowers with a sundial at its centre and a border of canna lilies and rhubarb round the edge. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
To the front of Hohen-Cremmen, country seat of the von Briest family since the time of Elector Georg Wilhelm, bright sunshine fell on the midday silence in the village street, while on the side facing the park and gardens a wing built on at right angles cast its broad shadow first on a white and green flagstone path, then out over a large roundel of flowers with a sundial at its centre and a border of canna lilies and rhubarb round the edge. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fight your way through the forest of place names, ranks of civil servants intriguingly ending in Rat to find a new literary heroine in dear Effi. She is a star, bubbly, joyful, kind and loving, accepting, decent in her heart and quite adorable. Her parents learn lessons as we all must, and her husband eats the bitter fruits of being right. What a lively ride as we bounce alongside her to the end. My favourite of all was Rollo , he really was a Prince of the canine world. Other more erudite reviews give the proper reaction to this book but I came to it for fun and a taste of a time and place that I have come to love through Elizabeth Von Arnim and was not disappointed.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An emotive portrayal of the damaging effects of Prussian society, where the opression of the protagonist Effi is Fontane's concern. Effi is forced to live according to society's rules and regulations, after marrying Innstetten to secure her social position. Society's rectitude limits the autonomy of Effi and also her husband Innstetten, although both characters respond to this limitation in contrasting ways. Effi resorts to adultery to escape her oppressive marriage, whereas Innstetten throws himself deeper into the social world. The consequences of both responses lead to the tragic ending of the book. Above all, a great book & well written.
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first read this novel as part of my degree and expected it, like so many other books I've read for the course, to be either dull or too abstract to be enjoyable. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I suspected at first that it was going to be a Jane Austen style period thing, whereas in actual fact it turns out to be a beautifully written and involving tale of the difficulties of fitting in with the norms of a society that leaves no space for the individual.
Effi is a wonderful protagonist because it is so easy to like her. She is not the wet and feeble woman of so many novels in this vein, she is lively and engaging. There is genuine engagement with all the characters, both male and female, which I have never felt with Jane Austen or the Brontes. There is plenty of dialogue, which Fontane was wonderful at writing. It really helps you to get to know the characters, and it is also very entertaining. I would have to disagree with Fontane himself to say that Effi's husband does not come across as the nice guy Fontane was aiming for.
By this point in history we have probably realised that late 19th century society left a lot to be desired in some respects, and so Fontane's social criticism is perhaps unnecessary if you're not studying the period. But it is so well written, and the story is so simple but so involving (based on a true story, so I hear, although there are probably so many true stories of this kind that that's not really very exciting) that it is well worth a read so that you can get to know Effi and go through her troubles with her. Sadly I can't comment on the quality of this translation though because I haven't read it in translation.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
for screen writers
This is devastatingly interesting and well written book. Not only the lay persons, the scriptwriters and writers in general need to read to study the style of the author to enrich... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Adlerinternational
Difficult to connect with characters
I'm afraid that reading this immediately after Madame Bovary may have influenced my opinion on this book. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Rachel
Madame Bovary without Flaubert's flair
A stripped down overview of a middle class marriage and affair inside the changing norms of a shifting Prussia. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Brownbear101
A forgotten classic
This book was suggested for our book club by someone who had read it many years ago. It takes its place alongside Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2009 by Helen
Poor translation
A pity the translation of this classic novel has to be so stilted. The choice of words and the un-Englishness of the English seriously detracts from the story. Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2008 by Klosterneuburg Kid
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