The blind side of the heart

Resource Information

The work The blind side of the heart represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Internet Archive - Open Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The blind side of the heart

Statement of responsibility

Julia Franck ; translated from the German by Anthea Bell

Creator

• Franck, Julia

Contributor

• Bell, Anthea

Subject

• Germany
• Absentee mothers
• World War (1939-1945)
• Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
• Single mothers
• 1900 - 1999
• Psychological aspects
• Social conditions
• Fiction
• Domestic fiction
• Sisters -- Fiction
• World War (1914-1918)

Genre

• Fiction
• Domestic fiction

Language

• eng
• ger
• eng

Summary

"Amid the chaos of civilians fleeing West in a provincial German railway station in 1945 Helene has brought her seven-year-old son. Having survived with him through the horrors and deprivations of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns." "Many years earlier, Helene and her sister Martha's childhood in rural Germany is abruptly ended by the outbreak of the First World War. Her father, sent to the eastern front, comes home only to die. Their Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. Helene calls the condition blindness of the heart, and fears the growing coldness of her mother, who hardly seems to notice her daughters any more. In the early 1920s, after their father's death, she and Martha move to Berlin. Helene falls in love with Carl, but when he dies just before their engagement, life becomes meaningless for her and she takes refuge in her work as a nurse. At a party she meets Wilhelm, an ambitious civil engineer who wants to build motorways for the Reich and to make Helene his wife. Their marriage, which soon proves disastrous, takes Helene to Stettin, where her son is born. She finds the love and closeness demanded by the little boy more than she can provide, and soon she cannot shake off the idea of simply disappearing." "Finally she comes to a shocking decision. The Blind Side of the Heart tells of two World Wars, of hope, loneliness and love, and of a life lived in terrible times. It is a great family novel, a powerful portrayal of an era, and the story of a fascinating woman."--Jacket

Member of

• Mittagsfrau

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

833/.92

Index

no index present

Language note

Translated from the German

LC call number

PT2666.R264

LC item number

M5813 2009

Literary form

fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries