Eight Stories, by Erich Maria Remarque

With some writers, it’s hard to separate the biography from the work. In Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss, by Erich Maria Remarque, the brief stories and vignettes read almost like therapy. Almost all of them are set after World War I and feature German ex-soldiers. Each of them takes a different look at what life is like for those soldiers, from the deeply traumatized to the philosophical to the betrayed. This cross section offers a glimpse at what men might have felt after losing a terrible conflict, in the years before Nazism took hold.

The standout stories, for me, were:

“Where Karl Had Fought.” In this story, an unnamed narrator is taking a road trip with his friend, Karl. Karl is an ebullient man with a lot to look forward to in his life. He’s made a success of himself in the years since he was a soldier. But as they get closer to the place where Karl fought, his forward-looking optimism starts to fade. His “happiness” is a facade; it’s a front he wears over his memories as a soldier in one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.

“Josef’s Wife.” Josef suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from the war. He’s uncommunicative and profoundly depressed. Meanwhile, his wife continues to run the farm as best she can. She thought that, with Josef back, things might return to normal. But as Josef continues to sink into his memories, she decides that there’s only one thing that can cure him: a trip back to the dugout where he was almost buried alive.

“I Dreamt Last Night.” There were a lot of different kinds of deaths in World War I. There were the instant kind, when a bomb or a bullet killed a soldier in a second. There were the lingering kind, in which a wound or infection slowly snuffed out a life. The rarest kind of death is a good death. We get to see a good death in this story. It wasn’t a necessary death—none of the deaths in WWI were—but we get to see a soldier find a measure of peace before he passes on.

Remarque’s stories, all previously published in the early 1930s, are more about creating a mood or painting a psychological portrait of a character instead of plot. It was strange for me to see stories set before 1933 that didn’t discuss the Nazis at all. Eight Stories are all about the aftermath of World War I, but I couldn’t help but fret about the looming destruction that was waiting for soldiers like the characters Remarque created.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 4 May 2018.