New Year

Starred review from September 13, 2021
In this wrenching psychological portrait from Zeh (Empty Hearts), a character’s buried traumatic past distorts his memory and loosens his grip on reality. The author locks the reader inside the mind of Henning, a publishing professional who is on holiday on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands with his wife and two young children. Over the course of a solitary bike ride up the steep hills to Femés, Henning labors to fend off what he thinks of as “it”—the uncontrollable panic attacks that have dogged him for much of his adult life. As he struggles for control and begins lashing out mentally at his work, his loved ones, and anything else that could be a potential catalyst, the landscape grows increasingly ominous—and familiar to him. The tale’s startling climax, which reveals the roots of Henning’s neuroses and the unreliability of his perspective, is perfectly executed, with the author adopting a child’s-eye view of past events that is colored by nostalgia and terrifying vulnerability. Zeh’s novel skillfully asks how a person can come to terms with a painful past that has been intentionally misremembered for the purpose of sustaining one’s mental health. Readers, though, will have no trouble remembering this.

Starred review from September 1, 2021
While on vacation, a family man sets off on a solo bicycle ride with seriously unexpected results. Henning, a married man with two kids under 5, organizes a surprise two-week family holiday in Lanzarote over Christmas and New Year's. So far, so good, apart from a few small issues: His wife, Theresa, likes to complain about the weather whether they're at home in Germany or on a beautiful volcanic island in the Atlantic; Henning has been having panic attacks over the past two years, and it takes real work on his part to try to manage them; and, at a fancy dinner on New Year's Eve, Theresa flirts shamelessly with another man. Spontaneously, on the morning of New Year's Day, Henning decides to take a bike ride on his own for some fresh air and a little me time. The ride is punishing, exhilarating, and exhausting, but Henning uses it to reflect on his life and his extended family experiences with his in-laws, his mother, and his sister. When he sees a sign for an art gallery, he stops by and meets the artist, Lisa. But being in the building, a house, in fact, draws Henning into a vastly different mental and emotional state: Halfway through the book, the tale turns to a terrifying and grisly lost memory as Henning regresses back to a previously unacknowledged childhood trauma. This spine-tingler captures the peak of what appears to be a spectacularly hallucinatory middle-aged crisis.

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