Bumping into her former psychoanalyst during a night out drinking in Prenzlauer Berg sets Judith Hermann’s gears of memory turning in this brilliant memoir (or is it a work of autofiction?) by one of Germany’s great contemporary writers.
In three interlocking parts, Hermann deftly moves between Berlin and her rambling family house on the North Sea coast; between her troubled West Berlin childhood and her counterculture circle of friends post-Wende; between the analyst’s couch and the writing desk.
We’d Have Told Each Other Everything was originally conceived as a series of literary lectures, and it’s a striking meditation on writing and memory, but hardly academic or stuffy. I’ve long been an admirer of Hermann’s short stories, and Katy Derbyshire’s charming translation brings her poignant, understated style to English readers. Here Hermann is frank, revealing and yet still elusive.
After the run-in with her analyst, Hermann drops a copy of a short story based on their sessions in his letterbox. He responds with a note: “What untiringly detailed work, altering and distorting everything so skillfully that in the end nothing is correct any more, yet everything is true.” As good of a line as any to sum up this lovely book.
- We’d Have Told Each Other Everything by Judith Hermann (trans. Katy Derbyshire) is available from Mercier Press, details.
