Seven Years

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By Peter Stamm & Michael Hoffman

Publisher Description

Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women—and he can’t make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts at starting a family get the best of them. Alex soon finds himself kindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona, Alex is inexplicably drawn to her while despising himself for it. Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. But when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn, and Alex is puzzled more than ever by the mysteries of his heart.

Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. Seven Years is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.

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13 Reviews

2.5

zell

Created 11 months ago

Lily

Created almost 2 years ago

“'Seven Years' is a character study of unlikeable people. Between Alex, Sonja and Iwona, there is something to disapprove of when it comes to each of them, plus unappealing side characters too. But this is the reality, the evolution of humanity, from the destruction of our natural environment to the tangled relationship people have with their work, and the selfishness that defines most of us are testaments to that. So if anything, I thought this story was refreshing, it didn't shy away from saying things as they are. We follow Alex from his student years to his marriage with Sonja. About seven years into their relationship, Alex revisists his ex-lover Iwona, an illegal Polish immigrant to Munich. When they were last seeing each other, it was purely physical. Alex did not find her interesting or beautiful, unlike Sonja, described as intelligent, attractive and charming. Yet, an undefined quality kept on pulling him back, in private with Iwona him feeling like he could dominate her yet in public feeling deeply ashamed at their connection. They couldn't be more different, Iwona being religious and shy and we observe little but the most basic of communication between them. But the unexpected happens - Iwona gets pregnant. As we are in Alex's perspective, it is easy to pick apart all his behaviours and his reasoning thereof. And the writing is very inviting of this. It's simply constructed sentences, matter-of-fact statements that don't give you a judgement or a criticism, but leaves room for your own interpretation. And this is what made this an interesting character study for me: the author didn't tell me how to think about what I was reading, but portrayed all events and allowed me to form my own opinions. Character-driven stories tend to be my favourite ones, the kind that are psychological, that expose me to other ways of thinking and offer me a peak into a personality very different to my own. Why does Alex cheat on his perfect wife? What exactly keeps Alex coming back to Iwona, is it just pheromones or is it the need for power that he never fully admits to? Or is this actually a sub-dom relationship, albeit in more 'proper' circumstances? There's a lot to unpack here, yet the story has a context and a modernity that makes it readable and accessible. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the geography of Munich, travelling through Western Europe, these are things that readers will be able to relate to or imagine, and it keeps the story grounded rather than it running away with itself.”

Siremc

Created over 2 years ago

cdincer

Created about 3 years ago

hotdog

Created about 4 years ago

About Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm is the author of the novels Seven Years, On a Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, and the short-story collections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His prize-winning books have been translated into more than thirty languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.

Michael Hofmann has translated the work of Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Peter Stephan Jungk, and many others. He is the author of several books of poems and a book of essays, Behind the Lines, and is the editor of the anthology Twentieth-Century German Poetry. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida and London.