
' Heart-rending & heart-warming for all its gentleness a very powerful novel' Jim Crace Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family He is a man of very few words & so when he falls in love with Marie he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain When Marie dies in an avalanche pregnant with their first child Andreas' heart is broken He leaves his valley just once more to fight in WWII
- where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus
- & returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity & beauty in solitude An exquisite novel about a simple life it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace & truth It looks at the moments big & small that make us what we are