Christoph is a writer, who for a long time but no longer was in a relationship with an actress, Magdalena. He spends long hours walking and talking with a young actress Lena whose boyfriend, a writer, is called Chris. We wander too: through Stockholm, Barcelona - cities where Christoph/Chris have lived and worked - or not. What is imagined in this raconteuring by Christopher, and what is real? Is Chris actually repeating the same steps in his life as Christopher has in his? We never know. Life, imagination are blurred and kaleidoscoped together in the telling of the tale. An unsettling story imbued with melancholy. ( )

‘There are distinctions, variations. Those are the mistakes, the asymmetries that make life possible in the first place.’

Peter Stamm’s new novel (novella?) is an intriguing meditation on identity and life choices that somehow always seems slightly out of reach. The book raises plenty of questions, but leaves many of them unanswered, and that will be its strength, for some, and its weakness, for others.

Christoph, a middle-aged writer whose last book was based on his failed relationship with an actress called Magdalena, becomes convinced that he has a younger doppelganger, who works in the same hotel where he used to work, and is in a relationship with a woman called Lena. Christoph leaves a message for Lena to meet him, and they spend a day wandering around Stockholm as he tells her his story, that might also be her story. As they talk, incidents from both twenty years ago and the more recent past are replayed but in slightly different versions, people meet in the same places but the outcome is a variation on the ‘original’. In his telling of the story, it transpires that Christoph met and told the same story to his younger ‘self’, called Chris, four years earlier in Barcelona. In that meeting it somehow becomes apparent that the book that Christoph wrote either doesn’t exist or has somehow been deleted from all records. And so, he proceeds to try to recreate the book from his memory, but things are more problematic: ‘the memory dissolved, and I realized how much I had forgotten.’ In trying to write the same book, it turns out to be different.

Throughout the book there are subtle hints that something decidedly odd is going on: Christoph follows Lena round as she shops and visits an art gallery, but she never notices that he is there; Chris, whom he also starts trailing, never recognizes him whenever there eyes meet; Christoph starts to see what can only be described as visions, or ghosts, of people that no-one else seems to be able to see. As the stories of the four individuals weave in and out of themselves, the whole notion of writing a story becomes central to the book itself; if our lives are written as stories, how free are we? And just how reliable is Christoph?

This is a beguiling and thought-provoking short novel, full of ideas and questions without offering much by way of solutions. It is, perhaps, a little too cerebral for its own good and this slightly detracts from the overall feel of the book. It is a little detached, full of wistful moments of gazing at nothing, lost deep in thought. However, there is fun to be had watching the motifs and events play out in there many different variations, and the whole thing will indeed make the reader ponder the notion of how our lives are somehow just playing out over and over. Thoughtful, intelligent and well worth a read. 4 stars. ( )