Review by Taryn Grant
To the Back Of Beyond by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hoffman
Other Press, 2017
At first pass the title reads with a satisfying punch and clarity: To the Back of Beyond. On further scrutiny, the title of Peter Stamm’s sixth novel reveals its ambiguity. A simple imperative is deceived by that final word. The beyond is a place unknowable or unbelievable—are we headed within it? Or maybe Stamm is speaking of backwards movement, of returning from the beyond. Maybe it’s not even a place, but a set of alternatives—paths not taken. Stamm is ambivalent about adhering to reality. And yet the path of his prose feels as real and grounded as a vivid memory.
To the Back of Beyond opens as the Swiss summer draws to a close. A man named Thomas has built a tidy life for himself in the village where he grew up and to which he’s just returned from holidays. He and his wife Astrid put their two young children to bed and take a bottle of wine into the garden. Before long, Astrid is called back inside by their youngest, Konrad, who’s restless.
Astrid has already settled back into the obligations of home—cooking, laundry, comforting the children. But Thomas is still in the liminal space between the holiday and the usual routine. He knows what’s ahead and sees it like a vision; he’ll return to work the next day, and his children will go to school. Astrid will clean up the wine and newspaper, which he’ll leave in the garden tonight. The vision appears inevitable, and yet, with less thought than one would give to scratching their ear, Thomas stands up from the garden bench and walks away.
He walks away from his house and family, away from the village, his job and all other responsibilities. It seems simple. He doesn’t run but he doesn’t stop. Thomas walks into the night as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Stamm writes it plainly. “At the edge of the wood, the asphalt road became an unpaved forest track that was wide enough for him to be able to follow it easily in the dark. Thomas had the sensation of entering a different sort of space. He could hear the pouring of water, which first grew louder, then, as the track started to climb, softer again” (36).
Images of nature wallpaper the story. It’s all that Thomas has to take in as he treks, day after day, aimless but self-assured. He sometimes has thoughts of Astrid and the children, fleeting, like a feeling of déjà vu. Stamm’s restraint gives the story a beautiful flow. When the reader does pause, it’s a surprise how much has been felt.
Of course it’s unfair to Astrid. Thomas leaves without a trace, an explanation and seemingly without a care. But the unfairness isn’t the striking part; it’s the truth of the inequity that resonates. Thomas leaves his family without a backward glance while Astrid is obliged to stay. She endures the ambiguous grief of his disappearance and continues to raise the children alone. She covers for him at work and keeps his absence quiet, hoping that he’ll eventually come back. Of course it would happen this way, the man feeling the freedom to go and having the arrogance to follow his impulses, while the woman stoically carries on. As much as To the Back of Beyond is a mystery—the mystery of Thomas’ departure—it’s also a parable of marriage.
“It was an urge she had felt herself,” Stamm says of Astrid. “When Ella was very young and colicky, and hadn’t slept through a single night, when she stayed up screaming for hours, and Astrid was tired to the point of exhaustion, she had sometimes walked out of the house, leaving the baby all alone for half an hour or even an hour sometimes” (38).
She rationalizes, as if his abandonment were a justifiable sequel to her own “escapades.”
Astrid reflects, “Maybe he had such fantasies of flight as well, and needed time alone to collect himself in the din of their normal day” (39). She gives him the benefit of the doubt and affords herself little sympathy, as women often do.
Her secret walks are a mere shadow of Thomas’ disappearance. They have the same shape, but not the same weight. And shadows have no bearing on the objects that cast them, but to Astrid’s mind, Thomas’ actions must be a consequence of hers.
Stamm is an expert at telling stories through subtle turns. He slips back and forth between Astrid and Thomas, like a needle pulling thread from one side of a cloth to the other. We see one solid thing from two different sides—through the unique perspectives of two inextricable characters. Astrid’s and Thomas’ stories sometimes overlap in space and time, experience and thought, but they never completely align. Contrasts and discrepancies between the two emerge and suggest something impossible: the existence of differing realities.
Fanciful or realistic—it’s usually declared at the outset. We assign novels to categories of fantasy or science fiction if they don’t sufficiently resemble the world of our experience. Stamm ignores the distinction. After grounding his novel in a familiar realm, he branches it in two paradoxical directions. Incongruous paths occur simultaneously. Astrid describes the experience: “The tiniest detail, the least circumstance was enough to split reality in two, in four, eight, sixteen versions, into an unending number of worlds” (109).
It has the energy of a climax, but Stamm’s spare prose maintains a smooth course. His finesse allows To the Back of Beyond to behave equally as a novel of mystery, family drama, tragedy and, surprisingly, of love.
The strange turns of this story require a gradual giving in, an unreasoning. Allow for the thrill and it will be found.
To the Back of Beyond was translated from the German by Michael Hoffman.
Taryn Grant is a freelance writer and reporter in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Follow her on Twitter @tarynalgrant