{"product_id":"irretrievable-9781590173749","title":"Irretrievable","description":"\u003cp\u003eOpposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, the appealing married couple at the center of this engrossing book by one of Germany's greatest novelists, could not be less alike. Christine is a serious soul from a devout background. She is brooding and beautiful and devoted to her husband and their two children. Helmut is lighthearted and pleasure-loving and largely content to defer to his wife's deeper feelings and better wisdom. They live in a beautiful large house overlooking the sea, which they built themselves, and have been happily married for twenty-three years--only of late a certain tension has crept into their dealings with each other. Little jokes, casual endearments, long-meditated plans: they all hit a raw nerve. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e How a couple can slowly drift apart, until one day they find themselves in a situation which is nothing they ever wished for but from which they cannot go back, is at the heart of this timeless story of everyday life. Theodor Fontane's great gift is to tell the story effectively in his characters' own words, listening to how they talk and fail to talk to each other, watching them turn away from their own true feelings as much as from each other. \u003ci\u003eIrretrievable\u003c\/i\u003e is a nuanced, affectionate, enormously sophisticated, and profoundly humane reckoning with the blindness of love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=AUTH-16156735\"\u003eTheodor Fontane\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/15\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 288\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.63lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.49h x 4.79w x 0.61d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781590173749\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1590173740\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBISAC Categories:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-FIC\"\u003eFiction\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-FIC019000\"\u003eLiterary\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-FIC\"\u003eFiction\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-FIC004000\"\u003eClassics\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-FIC\"\u003eFiction\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-FIC008000\"\u003eSagas\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheodor Fontane (1819-1898), novelist, critic, poet, and travel writer, was one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century German men of letters. He was born into a French Huguenot family in the Prussian town of Neuruppin, where his father owned a small pharmacy. His father's gambling debts forced the family to move repeatedly, and eventually his temperamentally mismatched parents separated. Though Fontane showed early interest in history and literature--jotting down stories into school notebooks--he could not afford to attend university; instead he apprenticed as a pharmacist and eventually settled in Berlin. There he joined the influential literary society Tunnel über der Spree, which included among its members Theodor Storm and Gottfried Keller, and turned to writing. In 1850 Fontane's first published books, two volumes of ballads, appeared; they would prove to be his most successful books during his lifetime. He spent the next four decades working as a critic, journalist, and war correspondent while producing some fifty works of history, travel narrative, and fiction. His early novels, the first of which was published in 1878, when Fontane was nearly sixty, concerned recent historical events. It was not until the late 1880s that he turned to his great novels of modern society, remarkable for their psychological insight: \u003ci\u003eTrials and Tribulations \u003c\/i\u003e(1888), \u003ci\u003eIrretrievable\u003c\/i\u003e (1891), \u003ci\u003eFrau Jenny Treibel\u003c\/i\u003e (1892), and \u003ci\u003eEffi Briest\u003c\/i\u003e (1895). During his last years, Fontane returned to writing poetry, and, while recovering from a severe illness, wrote an autobiographical novel that would prove to be a late commercial success. He is buried in the French section of the Friedhof II cemetery in Berlin.\u2028\u2028 \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Douglas Parmée (1914-2008) was a lecturer in modern languages at Cambridge and a Lifetime Fellow of Queens' College. He translated many works of classic and contemporary literature from French, Italian, and German, receiving the the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French translation in 1976. NYRB Classics publishes his\u2028translations of\u003ci\u003e The Child\u003c\/i\u003e by Jules Vallès, \u003ci\u003eAfloat\u003c\/i\u003e by Guy de Maupassant, and \u003ci\u003eNature Stories\u003c\/i\u003e by Jules Renard.\u2028\u2028 \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Phillip Lopate is the author of the essay collections \u003ci\u003eAgainst Joie de Vivre, Bachelorhood, Being with Children, Portrait of My Body, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTotally, Tenderly, Tragically\u003c\/i\u003e; and of the novels \u003ci\u003eThe Rug Merchant\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eConfessions of a Summer.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New York Review of Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44706206810349,"sku":"9781590173749","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/8097\/6621\/products\/img_3a07efeb-a402-4642-a47a-3dd2bba2e3c5.jpg?v=1703951760","url":"https:\/\/sureshotbooks.com\/es\/products\/irretrievable-9781590173749","provider":"SureShot Books Publishing LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}