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Background

Published in 2023 by Farrar, Straus, Giroux. This is Jemc’s fifth book. She has written three novels and two short story collections. Her breakout might be considered The Grip of It, which is a horror tale about a house that has a mind of its own.

Genre: Historical fiction, loosely defined; Literary, with a dash of humor.

Setting: Bavaria, Hungary, Vienna

Additional Notes and reviews:

Review by Annie Sauveur

Interview with the author

If you choose to pick this one up, keep in mind that it is literary and takes a LOT of liberties with the historical facts, as generally agreed upon.

If you are enamored of Sisi and are always looking for more about her, then give it a try. If you are inclined to be frustrated with anachronisms, maybe don’t.

Theme: Questions about identity, about how people can have everything and still be miserable. About how an existence without purpose makes us unhappy.

Things we thought AUTHOR did well as a writer

that we would like to emulate.:

• The Story Questions: the main question seems to be: What does it mean to be happy? How can humans be happy? Or you could substitute satisfied for happy. What makes a meaningful life? Ludwig and Sisi are immensely privileged, but they seem determined to squander every advantage and be unhappy and without purpose in their lives. They embrace things they think will give them purpose , but none of them do. They are, essentially, performing to an Empty Theatre.

• Author Voice: The author does an excellent job of inserting a chatty narrator who comes across like a gossipy aunt telling the reader the story. It is engaging, and often intrusive, but for the kind of story she is telling, it works. Even though the novel jumps around in time and places, the narrator keeps the reader engaged and grounded in the story of these two very unhappy people.

• Literary Fiction: Read this for a good example of what it means to be experimental. This is not linear, it is also not strictly historical in the way that most historical fiction is. There is commentary, there are anachronisms, but it is done with a light touch and with an effective telling to get to the point the author is making, which is not to strictly tell the story of these two people’s lives, but rather to examine how it is that they had everything and nothing at the same time.
  Satire: Part of the challenge of reading this book is that it is satirical. It never pretends to be giving the reader the real events or the real people. If the reader expects traditional historical fiction, they will be disappointed. If they read with an open mind to see what the author has to offer on this topic as an admittedly non-historian, though decent researcher, then they may enjoy it immensely. Looking at the cover is your first hint that it might be a little out of the ordinary, and it is a good example of why covers are important and how much work they do in setting the reader’s expectations.