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Book Reviews - Review 208

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Thomas Bernhard


Auslöschung (Extinction)

Category: Fiction | Published: 1986 | Review Added: 07-09-2009

Rating: 4 - A top read

(Qualifier: Ages since I read this.)

Can't remember very much about this; it's a monologue by an ageing writer, trying to come to terms with his love-hate relationship with a family he despises. Apparently the family is a metaphor for modern Austria, as Bernhard saw it: conservative, hypocritical and refusing to come to terms with its guilt.

As with other of Bernhard's late novels, a humanity shows through in this novel that is absent in the earlier ones. It was Bernhard's last novel; there are hints of a faith in youth, personified by the narrator's student Ganbetti; and there is compassion for the Jews murdered by the Nazis.

In its theme of contempt for the family unit, this novel is similar to Korrektur, but is easier to read, as by this stage Bernhard had reined in his tendency to grammatical excess. I think I need to read it again to form a definitive judgement of it, but I felt on reading it that it ranked among Bernhard's best works.

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