The End of Loneliness: A Novel - Softcover

Wells, Benedict

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143134000 ISBN 13: 9780143134008

Verlag: Penguin Books, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

From internationally bestselling author Benedict Wells, a sweeping novel of love and loss, and of the lives we never get to live 

“[D]azzling storytelling...The End of Loneliness is both affecting and accomplished -- and eternal.”—John Irving

Jules Moreau’s childhood is shattered after the sudden death of his parents. Enrolled in boarding school where he and his siblings, Marty and Liz, are forced to live apart, the once vivacious and fearless Jules retreats inward, preferring to live within his memories – until he meets Alva, a kindred soul caught in her own grief. Fifteen years pass and the siblings remain strangers to one another, bound by tragedy and struggling to recover the family they once were. Jules, still adrift, is anchored only by his desires to be a writer and to reunite with Alva, who turned her back on their friendship on the precipice of it becoming more. But, just as it seems they can make amends for time wasted, invisible forces – whether fate or chance – intervene.

            A kaleidoscopic family saga told through the fractured lives of the three Moreau siblings, alongside a faltering, recovering love story, The End of Loneliness is a stunning meditation on the power of our memories, of what can be lost and what can never be let go. With inimitable compassion and luminous, affecting prose, Benedict Wells contends with what it means to find a way through life, while never giving up hope you will find someone to go with you.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Benedict Wells was born in 1984 in Munich. At the age of six, he started his journey through three Bavarian boarding schools. Upon graduating, he moved to Berlin, where he dedicated his time to writing. In 2016 he won the European Prize for Literature for his third novel, The End of Loneliness, which remained on the German bestseller list for over a year. After years of living in Barcelona, Wells has recently returned to Berlin.

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Currents

(1980)

When I was seven, my family went on holiday to the south of France. My father, StŽphane Moreau, was from Berdillac, a village near Montpellier. One thousand eight hundred inhabitants, a baker's, a brasserie, two wineries, a carpentry workshop and a football team. We were visiting our grandmother, who in the past few years had not left the village.

As on all long drives, our father was wearing an old, pale brown leather jacket, pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth. Our mother, who'd been dozing for most of the journey, put on a cassette of Beatles songs. She turned to me.

"For you, Jules."

"Paperback Writer"-my favorite song, back then. I sat behind her, humming along. The music was drowned out by my siblings: my sister had twisted my brother's ear. Martin, whom we all called Marty, screamed and complained to our parents.

"Stupid snitch." Liz pinched his ear again.

They fought harder until Mother turned and gave them both a look. That look was a masterpiece. It conveyed understanding for Marty, with his mean sister, as well as for Liz with her annoying brother, but above all it conveyed that fighting was utterly pointless; furthermore, it even contrived to indicate that there might be ice cream for good children at the next petrol station. My brother and sister instantly stopped scrapping.

"Why do we have to go to Granny's every year?" asked Marty. "Why can't we go to Italy instead?"

"Because it's the done thing. And because your mamie loves it when you visit," said Father, in French, not taking his eyes off the road.

"Not true. She doesn't like us at all."

"And she smells like so funny," said Liz. "Like old armchairs."

"No, she smells like a moldy cellar," said my brother.

"Don't keep saying things like that about your mamie!" Our father steered the car round a roundabout.

I gazed out of the window. Thyme shrubs, garrigue and kermes oak stretched off into the distance. In the south of France the air was more fragrant, the colors more intense than at home. I put my hand in my pocket and played with the silver franc coins left over from last year.

We reached Berdillac toward evening. In retrospect, the place always reminded me of a grouchy but essentially lovable old man who dozed all day. As in many parts of Languedoc, the houses were made of sandstone; they had plain shutters and reddish, weathered roof tiles bathed in the soft light of the setting sun.

The gravel crunched beneath the wheels as our minibus came to a halt in front of the house at the end of the Rue Le Goff. There was something eerie about the building; its facade was overgrown with ivy, its roof dilapidated. It smelled of the past.

Our father got out first and bounced up to the door. Back then he must have been in what you would call his prime. In his mid-thirties, he still had thick, black hair and was friendly and polite to everyone he met. I would often see neighbors and colleagues standing round him when he spoke and listening, spellbound. The secret was his voice: soft, not too deep, not too high, with the merest hint of an accent, it encircled his listeners like an invisible lasso and drew them in. He was very highly thought of in his job as a chartered accountant, but the only thing that mattered to him was his family. Every Sunday he would cook for us all; he always had time for us children, and his boyish smile gave him an air of optimism. Later, though, looking at photos of him, I realized that something wasn't right even then. His eyes. There was a spark of pain in them, perhaps fear, too.

Our grandmother appeared at the door. She had a wry set to her mouth and barely looked at her son, as if she were ashamed of something. They hugged each other.

We children observed the scene from the car. Our grandmother was said to have been an excellent swimmer in her youth, and very well liked in the village. That must have been a hundred years ago. Her arms looked fragile, she had the wrinkled head of a tortoise and seemed scarcely able to bear the noise her grandchildren made. We were afraid of her, and of the sparsely furnished house with its old-fashioned wallpaper and iron beds. It was a mystery why our father wanted to come here every summer. Marty once said, later on, "It was as if he had to return year after year to the scene of his greatest humiliation."

But there was also . . . the smell of coffee in the morning. Sunbeams on the tiled floor of the parlor. Subdued clattering from the kitchen as my siblings fetched the cutlery for breakfast. My father immersed in the newspaper, my mother making plans for the day. Afterward: cave tours, bike rides, or a game of pŽtanque in the park.

Finally, at the end of August: Berdillac's annual wine festival. A band played in the evenings, houses were decked with lanterns and garlands, and the streets were filled with the smell of grilled meat. My brother and sister and I sat on the big flight of steps in front of the town hall, watching the grown-ups dance in the village square. I was holding the camera my father had entrusted to me. A heavy, expensive Mamiya: I'd been tasked with taking pictures of the f�te. I regarded this as an honor; our father never usually let us handle any of his cameras. Proudly, I took a few photos as he spun our mother elegantly across the dance floor.

"Papa's a good dancer," said Liz, knowledgeably.

My sister was eleven, a tall girl with blonde, curly hair. Already she was infected with what my brother and I called "theater sickness." Liz behaved at all times as though she were on stage. She beamed as if several spotlights were shining on her, and spoke so loudly and clearly that even the people at the back had no difficulty hearing her. She liked to act precociously around strangers when in fact she had only just emerged from her princess phase. My sister drew and sang, liked to play outdoors with the neighbors' children, would often go days without taking a shower, wanted to be an inventor one day then dreamed of being an elf the next, and there always seemed to be a thousand things going on in her head at once.

Back then, most of the girls made fun of Liz. I often saw my mother sitting with her in her room, consoling her when her fellow pupils had been teasing her again or had hidden her satchel. Afterward, I'd be allowed into Liz's room, too. She'd fling her arms around me, I'd feel her hot breath on my skin, and she would tell me everything she'd told our mother-probably more. I loved my sister to bits, and that didn't change when, years later, she deserted me.


After midnight it was still sultry and humid in the village. The men and women still on the dance floor-swapped parents among them-swapped partners after every song. I took another photo, although by this point I could barely hold the Mamiya.

"Give me the camera," said my brother.

"No, Papa gave it to me. I'm supposed to look after it."

"Just for a minute; I only want to take a photo. You don't know how to, anyway."

Marty snatched the camera from me.

"Don't be so mean to him," said Liz. "He was so happy he was allowed to have it."

"Yes, but his photos are rubbish, he doesn't know how to set the exposure."

"You're such a know-all. No wonder you haven't got any friends."

Marty took a few photos. He was the middle child. Ten years old, glasses, dark hair, pale, nondescript face. You could clearly see our parents in Liz and me, whereas in appearance he had nothing in common with them. Marty seemed to have materialized from some kind of non-place, an alien who had positioned himself between us. I didn't like him at all. In the films I saw, older brothers were always heroic boys who stood up for their younger siblings. My brother was a loner who spent the whole day sitting in his room...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0143134000
• ISBN 13: 9780143134008
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien