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Starting Salary All salary decisions should be fair, transparent and mindful of equal pay legislation. When agreeing a starting salary, consider: Offers should normally be made at the starting point of the approved scale. Any request beyond this must be supported by an objective, transparent case which justifies the request. Return to Book Page. From the winner of the IMPAC Award and the Nobel Prize, a fierce novel about a young Romanian woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life "I've been summoned.
She has been questioned before; this time, she believes, will. She has been questioned before; this time, she believes, will be worse.
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Sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy. Anything to get out of the country. As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot trying to flee to Hungary, to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them, to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers, and to Paul, her lover, her one source of trust, despite his constant drunkenness.
In her distraction, she misses her stop to find herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there makes her fear of the appointment pale by comparison. Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment confirms her standing as one of Europe's greatest writers. Hardcover , pages. Published September 13th by Metropolitan Books first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
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The Appointment
Lists with This Book. When I finally finished this remarkable work, my mind flashed back, for some obscure reason to my early twenties such exciting years when I loved a man, a cat and a book. Life, of course, has to develop and move on; I lost the man our lives were taking different directions , Sylvie died in quarantine but my magnificent book was and still remains with me: That is a twentieth century masterpiece.
I also wish to succeed because I want everyone possible to become aware of this book and read it. Putting handwritten notes in the back pockets of ten white linen suits being shipped to Italy that said, "Marry me" and signed with her name and address. Various other notes had been planted which our narrator denied but Major Albu was determined to extract the truth from her come what may. Indirectly and in a contradictory way she is divorcing herself from the situation by living in anonymity.
Although the tram ride takes ninety minutes, her various observations and the internal monologue they spark cover the breadth of her life. We learn about her past, her friends Lilli in particular and family, daily life and Romanian "expropriation" and other government officials, to name a few.
All this appears in the landscape of her thoughts and memories. Although her stream of consciousness takes us to various places in time and space, there is a fairly diffuse sense of ennui and antipathy. This book is so powerfully written. It is a veritable tour de force. It can be depressing at times, but then bounces back with black humour and comedy; interwoven with beautiful descriptions. Betrayal and lies are also imbedded within the text but it was the attention to detail which particularly impressed me; for example, the two wicker baskets to be found outside the bus her father drives.
Our narrator had realized that she has left her bag there and goes to look for it. My eyes widened and I laughed at this mesmerizing description. I kept on rereading pages and thought how did the author manage such exquisite prose when she lived under a totalitarian regime? Colours such as red and black are other powerful motifs symbolising death and showing how little life was valued in Romania at the time. Under their muzzles Lilli lay red as a bed of poppies. And, Our nameless narrator fumbled in her bag and found a small package there. It was such a shame that he was a drunkard but he did give our narrator happiness for the first couple of years.
For me it sounds like a gang, because the family was so large and each member was shady in his own way.
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When she finally gets off at the next stop she starts running and finds herself in a road where….. I had to reread this section not only one but three times. There were various interpretations here, well for me anyway, and the jury is still out on this. Another odd thing though was that there were no quotation marks or question marks throughout the book.
I wonder why our author did that.
The Appointment - Wikipedia
This is a very powerful, dark and moving novel. I can only describe it as depressing-brilliance and I cannot recommend it highly enough. View all 37 comments. What a simultaneously sinister and banal place. The novel is in every sense a dystopia. Only in this case it happens not to be an SF fantasy but based on 20th century events.
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Its narrative line is elliptical. It has been written in a rich though understated style with a subtle patterning of motifs throughout. I suppose it might be called muscular were its anatomy not so delicately wrought. It is not chic lit. It is highly readable literary fiction, not at all cryptic, and in the end emotionally shattering. The Appointment has a fragmented narrative line. It consists of an interbraiding, if you will, of nine or ten related stories. It is not a collection of linked stories. It is a novel. First there is the core story of our unnamed female narrator as she takes one particular streetcar journey to an interrogation with Major Albu, her tormentor in the secret police.
Around this core of the streetcar trip other stories are intertwined. These include the life and death of the beautiful Lilli and her elderly lover; the story of our narrator's involvement with a co-worker, Nelu, whom she fucks out of sheer boredom during a grim business trip and will thereafter have nothing to do with; and the story of how she meets Paul, her second husband. Early on she does something very silly, something that would be laughable in any other context, but which the authorities consider treasonous. Needless to say, the slips are found before shipping and she is denounced by the rejected Nelu.
Albu is scary but over the course of the novel we come to see how impotent he is. Moreover, we come to know what the state fears: A fate it was to undergo when the democratic movement swept Eastern Europe in See YouTube for video. It seems to me it would be like sending your innocuous kid sister in for questioning. Of what possible intelligence value can there be in interrogating a young woman who works in a button factory?
It is done solely in the name of ideological conformity. The people of this unnamed state have nothing to be proud of. They are essentially prisoners in their own country. Lilli is shot while trying to cross the border. Her fate becomes hortatory propaganda. There is no cultural life to speak of, no artistic expression. Very striking is the consistent preference throughout of young women for old men. Young men are — no, not those on whom all hopes and dreams for the future are placed — but a thoroughly disenfranchised lot, without opportunity, almost invisible.
Here the emasculated young men sit at tables ogling Lilli and her old man and tossing matchheads at them. Right or wrong, I saw the matchheads as symbols of forestalled ignition, quashed passion. This is a very powerful, very dark novel. I recommended it highly. View all 12 comments.
Oct 06, Jim Fonseca rated it it was amazing. The heroine of this novel lives her life waiting. She is a seamstress in a Romanian factory making fine men's overcoats for export to Italy. She is so desperate for escape from her pointless life that she inserts notes saying "Marry Me," with her name and address, into the linings of the coats. She has a live-in male friend who spends all of his time and most of her money drinking the day away.
There is no future here - it's more like maintaining a big dog and having the expense that goes with i The heroine of this novel lives her life waiting. There is no future here - it's more like maintaining a big dog and having the expense that goes with it. This is Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. So our heroine is in trouble again for those notes.
Now she could lose her job or even be imprisoned. She's been summoned once more to the inspector's office - thus the book's title.
The inspector is now taking a personal interest in her case; that is, he is taking a personal interest in her. Like other novels of Eastern Europe under Communism, the work is filled with angst and anomie. We are treated to some great prose. Then his eyeballs glistened and turned into little squares. Out shot his arm, and he slapped me. He was better at that then he was at making coffee, tying shoelaces, or sharpening pencils. Dec 07, Deea rated it it was amazing Shelves: There is a shocking matter of factness in the voice addressing to the readers of this book.
Belonging to the female character in the center of the story, it weaves the narration by adding together episodes full of horror from a past under communism her grandmother's death, her father's adultery, her father-in-law's acts of violence, Lilli's sexual misbehavior and death , details regarding a present ride by tram to the police office for interrogations and random descriptions of objects. How is it There is a shocking matter of factness in the voice addressing to the readers of this book. How is it to feel that everything surrounding you is spying on you?
Innanimate objects get personified around and these, together with people surrounding you among whom most act crazy if they are not crazy already seem to take part in a conspiratory whirlpool which has in the center your life. Everything becomes part of this cycle and the repetition and dullness of everyday events scare the hell out of you. Everything seems to be an enemy, everyone and everything seem to be plotting against you, even the lifeless objects in their silence seem to whisper against you. Everything suggests the feeling that someone is watching you and is going to inform on you to the secret police under the Romanian communist regime led by Ceausescu.
Stricken with constant fear and with the feeling that senselessness is easier to handle than the aimlessness of the everyday events, the main character constantly gives an answer to the question pointed above which Herta Muller seems to make a whole theme out of in this book "How is it to feel that everything surrounding you is spying on you?
The sessions of interrogations and her fear of being summoned become the major events of her present summing up a centerfold around which her whole life revolves. In such an atmosphere, it becomes impossible to grasp who you are anymore and what your principles really are: But when you have to say right who you are at this very moment, it's hard to get more out than an uneasy silence". Everybody informs on everybody and trust becomes a liability: The past brings up its examples of this statement: I can only interpret the open-ending taking this last phrase into account: How are you to fight with mad people in a world where everybody is mad and you are the only one who is different?
The result is that in such a world you begin to become suspicious of everyone and value things which in normal societies you would take for granted: I didn't check whether the severed finger could be bent. I relished its phrases and I read the most striking ones twice or even more times.
They kept me pondering about the obscurity of communism and on how the terror turned people into beasts. They made me wonder if I had any right to blame nowadays people for still wearing their scars of the communism as they still do and this question will keep me wondering for quite a while. On another note, I really enjoyed the review from the link below, although I don't agree with the ending: View all 14 comments. Cuando voy al interrogatorio, de entrada tengo que dejar en casa la felicidad. Everything happened in a twinkling, the time it takes for one person to assault another.
I already knew a number of beautiful words having to do with lubricated hydraulic machine parts: Capturing the linear side of things is all very well, but we are no Arachne in our weaving and wiggling our way out of the unyielding desire of the eye.
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The Wiki page for the author already rhapsodized on about Kafka, so I'll save us both some ethos and think instead on past and future. If you let it, the narrative will explain all that needs be expounded, letting even a novice in Romanian tinged literature such as myself into its endless bowels. When the final page is turned, you'll have the comfort of your narrator's closure, for you'll know exactly how she came to be here and where she has utmost need to go.
Whether you accept the lines drawn by death and madness by that point is another matter entirely. On the way I thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could be up in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbidding people to look at it. The matter of her being a woman may be a turnoff to some, for the cruelty aimed so casually and frequently at female bodies is the same regardless of political leanings, souring those feel good leavings that horror stories of Communism inevitably leave on the democratically inclined.
It's not nearly as difficult as Morrison and Jelinek, but it is said, and unlike the others dwells on many a tale of daughters fucking fathers note the order and implicated position and other sundry tales of female lust, so maybe there is something to be said about that Communism business in conjunction with the patriarchy. Or not, but whether 'twas meaning or null, it was worth noting, for superstitious warding off harm before the next appointment share with a sought out sex an ultimate need for control. First look left and then look right, son, to see if a car's coming. That's important when you're crossing a street but it's a dangerous way to think.
Hell hath no fury like a man offended. This is certainly autobiographical: Herta was in fact interrogated while living in Romania, under Ceausescu. During her first marriage while husband was at the military service she recalls she escaped home and went to the mountains Carpatos mountains with conservatory finalists; she saw a frozen lake and cr This is certainly autobiographical: Her second husband Paul is a drunken man: People at that time drank a lot. The factory worker dedicates some analysis to the drinking habit: There are so many plum trees.
She had a bad experience under the dictator of Romania -she was under constant interrogation by the Securitate-the Romanian secret services. Her mother went to a labor camp in the Soviet Union.