I read this novel as part of <a href="https://lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com/2023/09/22/announcing-german-literature-month-xiii/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">German Literature Month</a> (initially seduced by the gorgeous cover). It tells the inter-linked stories of five women. The challenge with this structure is that invariably you get the sense that the author has invested in some characters more than others. In this case, the opening story about a woman whose child dies is where Krien delivers - it's a brutal, heart-breaking piece of writing, and ultimately it was hard to sustain the intensity for the remainder of the book. That said, I very much enjoyed the way Krien linked the characters.

3/5

I received my copy of <em>Love in Five Acts</em> from the publisher, Quercus Books, via <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/214549" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NetGalley</a>, in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this series of stories about five interconnected middle-aged women in Leipzig, and what love, family and friendship mean to each of them. This is the book that I hoped Girl, Women, Other would be. ⁣
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Paula is coping with the early death of her second child which ended her marriage to a militant environmentalist, and is beginning to find that sense of a safety with a man who lost his wife to cancer. Her friend Judith is a horse-loving doctor who screens men on online dating websites the way she does horses, until she unexpectedly meets a man who finally fascinates her. Her patient Brida is an author who is is denial about the end of her marriage, and continues to carry on an affair with her ex-husband. The woman she stole her ex-husband from, Malika, is a violin teacher overlooked by her parents in favour of her flamboyant sister, and who sought to find that recognition in her devotion to a man unfaithful to her. The sister is Jorinda, an actress pregnant with the baby of a movie star, with two children from a crumbling marriage to a malicious far leftist.⁣
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These stories feel incredibly real, and what I enjoyed most was that each of these stories ends with some form acceptance, and the gracefulness to keep growing. ⁣
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#LoveInFiveActs #DanielaKrein

A solidly good read, with five distinct middle-aged women's voices. The gap between expectations and reality in these women's lives also mirrors the gap between hopes and reality following the German reunification, but it's done lightly, not with a heavy hand.

This was such a beautiful, moving book full of heart and tenderness. An instant classic that will stay with the reader long after they finish it.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Quercus Books, and the author Daniela Krien.
I thought this book was beautifully written and incredibly engaging, a study of female desire, ambition, and frailty, and what it's like to be a woman in the 21st century.
The five characters are intertwined in subtle ways, creating a common thread throughout the novel, but each story is unique and holds up individually. There is no airbrushing, each story is real and unfiltered, which is incredibly refreshing. Would highly recommend, 5 stars.

Translated from German, Love in Five Acts tells the stories of five interconnected women as they try to remain true to themselves as they love the people and places around them - friends, husbands, family, lovers, children, as well as maintaining an outwardly strength and resilience. They want to have it all but there's pressure to stop them from having it all.

The character studies of each woman are fantastic as the author peels back the layers. Each in crisis to define themselves and work out where they fit into society. They style of the novel and delving into the snapshots of these women's lives reminded me of Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and is just as captivating.

Thank you to @netgalley for providing me with a digital copy of this novel.

I loved everything about this book, I enjoyed the story about the five women. In fact, I found this book hard to put down it was so good. I really liked the cover as well but, unfortunately as it was on my kindle I couldn’t see the colours but I’m sure when it’s released in book form it will look fabulous. It’s the sort of book which takes you away from life for awhile which is the sort of book I really enjoy. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

This was originally written in German and today its released in English by Jamie Bulloch. This is a best seller in Germany and it’s no surprise! It’s a wonderful book exploring womanhood and struggles and realities of women’s lives.

This is the story of five women, with different lives and perspectives on family, relationships, career and what it means to be happy or successful. The book takes on various perspectives on what it means to be a women, a wife, a friend, a mother, a daughter and everything else in between. Each women has their own section of the book where we join them in dissecting parts of their lives. I liked the clear split between the five stories but also how the remained linked and relevant.

All of the women are loosely connected, with one of them (Judith) being the link. I didn’t really resonate with the main characters, which usually puts me off books a bit. However, with this I managed to stay engaged with their perspectives regardless, which is a testament to how well written (and translated) this is! Interestingly, all of the male characters were a bit stereotypical and underdeveloped but I can’t help but feel that was kind of on purpose given the nature of the book? The focus here is totally given to the female characters and their perspective.

This a book that explores love, grief, pain, feminism, sexuality, power and loads more big topics within today’s society. None of the characters have what would be deemed as socially “normal” or “healthy” relationships with their partners, family, friends and I thought it was such an interesting POV to explore... why do we only view a certain way of living as acceptable?

I thoroughly recommend this to anyone in search of a kind of realism-character study contemporary fiction read. I’ll be honest, it’s not very light hearted and I didn’t get totally absorbed in the story, but I enjoyed none the less!

Also, I love the gorgeous cover! This is what drew my attention in the first place!

Thank you to the publishers for a gifted e-arc in exchange for an honest review!
 
#LoveInFiveActs
@QuercusBooks
@MacLehosePress

Love in Five Acts was origionally written in German and has been translated by Jamie Bulloch. This book tells the story of five very different women, looking at their roles as wives, lovers, mothers, friends, sisters and daughters. All five of the women are connected, almost like six degrees of separation, but all have very different experiences in life.

The book is split into five parts, each part the story of one of the women looking for love. Paula, trying to cope with the death of a child and the breakdown of her marriage, finding it hard to move on. She was the character whose story stayed with me, the tragedy is every parents worst nightmare and I found her husband difficult and cold at times. Judith is on internet dating, but prefers her horse to most men. I loved her no nonsence attitude to life, unwilling to settle for second best. Brida is divorced but co-parenting with her ex husband. She is clinging to the last vestiges of her marriage, unable to move on. Finally there are sisters Malika and her sister Jorinda, Malika betrayed by a lover finding herself alone and without children, whilst her sister is pregnant with a third child she doesn’t want. What I loved about their stories was that they realised they could work together and support each other and be a family in their own right. Each story links to the next creating a natural flow to the book, whilst still keeping the individuality of each character.

This is a fairy short read, but it did take me longer that expected to read it. This was due to the wonderful and throught provoking prose and the individual voices of the five characters. Daniela Krien really captures the many different nuances of women, their relationships, and how one size doesn’t fit all; we are all looking for something different in our quest for love. In reading about all five women, I found myself relating to the feeling and situations these women found themselves in, and Daniela Krien shows their strenght and fragility in equal measure.

Love in Five Acts is a fascinating read into the minds of five individual women, all looking for love and acceptance. Daniela Krien’s beautiful writing captures the femininity of these women, their strengths, weaknesses and the different types of love they are looking for. Jamie Bulloch’s translaton should not be forgotten, nothing seems to be lost in the translaton, keeping the essesnce of the book. Beautifully written, with emapthy and understanding for some very difficult issues, this is a compelling and fascinating read.

It’s been a while since I found myself so totally absorbed in a novel as I was in Love in Five Acts, which is testament not only to Daniela Krien’s brilliantly realist storytelling, but also to Jamie Bulloch’s vivid translation. Though none of the five sections is particularly long, each concentrates on a different character with such depth and nuance – despite the rather spartan prose style – that I felt by the end as though I knew each woman intimately.

As the cover suggests, the five women in Love in Five Acts are all poised on the edge of something. Aged mainly in their thirties and forties – though we do encounter some, like Brida, as a younger woman – their lives have turned out quite differently to how they expected. Relationships have developed and fallen apart, children have been born and lost, and the established dynamics between parents and children, sisters or best friends have often shifted dramatically. A sense of helplessness reigns in many of the characters’ lives – Paula, for example, with whom the book opens, seems to have been a victim of circumstance in both her failed marriage and the tragic death of her child – while others fight with a grim determination to carve out a life at least approximating the one they once imagined. Some sections focus on a period of only a few years, others take a longer view, but each narrates some kind of turning point: the moment at which each character comes to the sobering realisation that, including themselves, ‘nobody was exactly how you wanted them to be’.

It is in many ways a poignant message, yet, just like its characters, Love in Five Acts is overwhelmingly strong. It offers a clear-sighted perspective of modern society and the roles women play (or are expected to play) within it. Themes such as infidelity, bereavement, motherhood and abortion are all tackled with sensitivity and an unwavering realism: Krien is never melodramatic, but nor does she avoid these topics, which are all threads in the fabric of contemporary society. While each woman is vastly different in character and accordingly experiences life in a distinctive way, they are bound by a common struggle to make sense of their lives, which goes beyond individual circumstance and delves into what it is to be human. From an apparently straightforward idea, Daniela Krien has created a many-layered and rewarding novel.

[The full version of this review is available on my blog.]

Love In Five Acts was one of those novels that worked on so many levels, it mesmerised, asked questions and brilliantly picked apart the lives of its five female protagonists.

Krien started with Paula, separated with one child caught between grief and the pitfalls of a new relationship. She took us back to the beginning to her relationship with ex-husband Ludger, their meeting, their marriage and their foray into parenthood. It seemed happy and full of potential until Krien made us look more closely as Ludger became dominate, as his opinions and decisions took over. It wasn’t until the death of their second child that it all fell apart, both grieving in differing ways, the pain tangible within Krien’s wonderful narrative. For many such a trauma would bring a couple together for others it drives them apart, each left to pick up the pieces in their own way. They seemed to be only one way Paula and Ludger could go, yet Krien left you with a sense of hope and a way forward.

Paula’s story was the one that seemed to linger with me because of its emotive content but that wasn’t to say that the four other women were not as good as they were, just different. I think that they represented the more common threads of love prevalent within society. There was Judith, the GP, the common thread, the one who knew all the other four women, the one who saw the other four women struggle with their own love lives. Was it a lesson to her, or did she crave some aspect of what they had. I found her quite selfish, stern, as she searched online for the one, and I was never sure what she was actually looking for, but I guess that was Krien’s point as she made Judith trawl the online dating sites.

For Brida it was coming to terms with ex husband Gotz’s new love, the idea that they could all get on for the sake of the children. Krein made her question how she could manage without him, made her look back with anguish at her failed marriage before the mist appeared to clear and a sereneness descended, an acceptance.

Malika was the woman left behind, the professional musician who had to live with rejection not only from the man she loved but her parents, then her sister Jorinde, the actress split between being a parent and pursuing the job she loved. I loved how they found a way to support each other to find some comfort and indeed a way to find individual happiness by working together.

I recognised some aspect of my own marriage and love life in all five of Krien’s women, that search for your soul mate, the perfect partner followed by marriage and children. I too have had to deal with divorce, the blended families, the foray into the online dating world, the rejection before eventually finding peace and solace in the fact that I don’t necessarily need a man to make me happy or even complete. Krien made it ok for us to reject the social norm or conform to what is expected, that it was upto to us as strong vibrant women to do as we please. Her observations, her understanding were brilliant and the skill in turning that into a novel that had such variety and depth was truly admiral.

I was sold on the premise of this book straight away, along with the fact that I had heard it was the #1 bestseller in Germany, and I have to say I wasn't disappointed! I really enjoyed this book, especially the interlinking between all of the women. It really showed how, although these were potentially more tight-knit connections, what these women went through are more or less universal experiences, or at least not uncommon, in how much their lives overlap, especially when concerning the men in their lives. As much as they were all interlinked, I do think each woman deserves to be talked about separately, as they are still very much 5 separate stories.

Paula - I feel like Paula was a strong start to the collection of stories, as you become immediately immersed with her story and her struggles. Although not everything is revealed straight away, the little tidbits about her life and her history really intrigued me! The backstory of her marriage to Ludger and how it led up to present-day was well laid-out. Interestingly, their whole argument over vaccinations seemed very topical considering the current climate, and how that fuelled further tension between them.

Judith - The moment I realised the connection between this story and Paula's, and subsequently all the others to come, felt like a very nice full-circle one. In particular, I enjoyed the sharp contrast between Judith and Paula in their approaches to love. Maybe this is why they've been friends for years! Reading Judith's story, it was clear she had difficulty committing to people in relationships but I think it helped make her more human. It showed how everyone has their own issues, whether personal like her bipolar disorder, or how even as a middle-aged woman she still had to deal with an unwanted pregnancy - something women all over the world can relate to.

Brida - I found Brida and her approach to love and relationships particularly fascinating, especially when she said, "love isn't an emotion. love isn't romance. love is an act". Brida's story came at the point in the book where I was maybe getting slightly disheartened by all these failed relationships and separated families, but maybe this is just more of a brutal reality than another unrealistic happy ending.

Malika - I really enjoyed the family element to Malika's story and how her situation contributed to defining her as a person, and how she goes about life and being in relationships. I found it interesting that Judith seemed to be the common link here, despite the fact that she presents herself as such a closed-off person. Looking back, it's so interesting seeing how Malika is portrayed in her own story as being dependent on her husband, when she is such a strong, reliable figure in her sister's life later down the line.

Joriinde - Reading the story of Jorinde and her unconventional family was a bit of a nice, refreshing change to the rest of the stories. While it still dealt with a much less significant man holding power over a strong woman, I enjoyed the fact the story wasn't purely relationship-driven. Saying this, however much her ex was no longer in the picture, Jorinde's story still showed how you can be unhappy for any number of reasons, even though she knew she was better off without him.

I found Krien's language to be absolutely beautiful, with a great translation from Jamie Bullock. Gems like "the rhythms of their lives were rarely in sync" were littered throughout, and I would love to read Krien's past works now to experience more. While not wholly relatable to me, I was fully absorbed into the lives of these miraculous women, and I thoroughly enjoyed every second.

The cover of this book caught my eye in all its beautiful simplicity and the stories within captivated me.

Five stories about five German women in their 30/40s living in Leipzig, each chapter tells the story of one woman and reads like a novel, as their lives loosely interconnect . Who they love, who loves them, their losses, desires, grief, ambition and search for contentment.

They felt familiar to me, these five woman.
They were written so realistically and captured life as a women at this age and at this time so perfectly. We have more power and choice now as women our forties than women did forty years ago, do we have greater expectations as a result and do we feel more pressure as a result? A German novel but it resonated strongly this Irish reader as I imagine it will with readers around the world.

I really enjoyed the setting of this book too. The descriptions of what the characters were eating, the spaces they lived in, the geography, the music referenced and the brief mentions of their parents lives before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

My only criticism is I wanted to read more. A great contemporary, well written , realistic novel that left me wanting more. I’ll look out for this authors future books.

4.5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is about the story of five women: Paula, who has lost a child, and a husband. Judith, who thinks more about horses than men, but still looks for love online. Brida, a writer who needs to choose between her work and her family. Malika, who struggles for recognition from her parents. And her sister Jorinde, pregnant for the third time and facing a divorce. These are the stories of women who have fulfilled their roles as wives, mothers, friends, lovers, sisters, and daughters.
This novel both intrigued me but sadly left me feeling disconnected from the characters. Each woman has a chapter which gives us the perspective of each, but I found it confusing as the time frame for each one goes back and forth. Unfortunately, none of the women have healthy love relationships with their parents, children, friends or lovers.
It is a book that looks at feminism in our current society and tackles some subjects well such as mental health, cheating, abortions, and others.
I would like to thank Quercus, MacLehose Press and Netgalley for an Earc of Love in five acts in return for an honest review.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the author, #NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this advanced reader’s copy in exchange for a frank, fair and honest review.

I do not usually read books that have been translated into English, but I thought I would give it a go. Unfortunately, it was not for me. I think the story lost a lot in translation. It is a book that looks at feminism in our current society and tackles some subjects well such as mental health, cheating, abortions, and others. The problem for me was that I did not engage with the characters in each story.

In a subject close to my own heart, Daniela Krien addresses the topic of what it is like to be a woman in the 21st Century. A woman who is herself... but hidden behind the roles of mother, daughter, wife, sister and lover. What happens to this core woman, does she disappear under these other roles or break free to follow her own path?
In Love In Five Acts we meet five women in Leipzig whose lives are linked. Paula a bookseller, her childhood friend Judith a doctor, Brida an author who Judith advises on her next book, Malika a violinist and music teacher who is a patient of Judith's and Jorinda, Judith's sister an actress.
Set in Germany the book touches on the East/West post war division in Germany and the freedom the fall of the Berlin Wall brought. But with this freedom these women now have to deal with the additional pressures of life choices, relationships with their husbands/lovers and relationships with older generations brought up in a different era.
This book really opened my eyes up to how difficult it is as a woman to stay true to ourselves and the difficult choices and sacrifices that we have to endure along the way.
I think you'll agree the cover from artist @ericzener is stunning and having read the book, it really fits in with the tone of Daniela Kriens writing.

Love in Five Acts is split up into 5 sections following the lives and relationships of five middle class women in Germany, whose lives are all interconnected.

The story covers a number of concepts and ideas, from mental health, sex, female friendships and the world of work, while examining how a modern woman aims to juggle all of these things herself. I enjoyed how raw some of these moments were, particularly those of tragedy and lust, I felt that these moments showed the vulnerability of the characters and was the thing that pulled me into the world of the book and commanded me to keep reading.

The novel is well translated from German and I only found a couple of typos and mistakes which I’m sure will be ironed out before publishing.

Despite usually enjoying stories about relationships and realistic storylines, I didn’t enjoy this title as much as I hoped.

Some characters, such as Paula and Malika, had much more interesting storylines than that of the other three. This also may just be in my opinion, but I also found Judith, Brida and Jorinde really hard to resonate with and like.

Another issue I found with the story was how dependent the women were on the men in their lives for happiness and fulfilment. I have seen this novel described as ‘feminist’ by others, although there are some aspects which I do agree that feminism is prevalent, particularly in terms of careers, aspects surrounding family, motherhood, sex and relationships were very outdated.

I also didn’t particularly enjoy how the characters interacted with each other. A lot of relationships felt frosty to me which again made the story hard to really relate to.

Something I also found hard to digest was the amount of affairs and infidelity amongst pretty much all of the characters, but perhaps that’s just my own moral compass getting in the way!

Thank you for NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

The older I get the more I appreciate books that resonate with my own life experience This is very true of "Love in Five Acts" which focuses on the constraints placed on the lives of contemporary women. Set in the German city of Leipzig, this book is about love in all its forms. 5 women, 5 stories but all connected. Paula is a bookseller who has had a personal tragedy in her life; Judith her childhood friend, a Doctor who seeks out unreliable lovers through dating sites; Brida a patient of Judith and an author who needs "a room of her own"; Malika the most developed character, who is a violinist and ex-over of Brida's husband and Jolinde, her sister, a divorced actress bringing up her three children.

The authors narrative style was more like a stream of consciousness, with less reliance on dialogue, which some may not like. The language was uncompromising and gritty. All the men in the book, bar one are unlikeable and are cast in stereotypical roles of either bad fathers and/or self obsessed lovers. I thoroughly this book Its a very short read which I flew through over a weekend. Always in the background is the re-unification of Germany and the former east-west divide. I found the lives of the women very realistic and engaging but despaired sometimes at the choices they made (as we all do in real life).

A recommended read and lets not forget that beautiful cover . Many thanks to @netgalley and @quercusbooks for this great read!

I was interested to read this book solely because of the fact that it was translated by Jamie Bulloch since I like his translation of two works by Birgit Vanderbeke, “You Would Have Missed Me” and “The Mussel Feast” which won him the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. His translation of the title is rather unique in itself. The original title of Daniela Krien in German is “Die Liebe im Ernstfall” which in English literally means “Love in Case of Emergency”. Instead, the title that is shown is “Love in Five Acts”, mimicking the number of five sections in this novel which tell the stories of five women in Leipzig, Germany.

Each woman in this book faces some kind of disturbances in their lives with modern problems. The bookseller Paula lost her second child, and in turn, her husband filed a divorce after accusing her of causing their daughter’s death. Paula’s best friend since childhood, the surgeon Dr Judith finds herself an independent woman who sometimes swipe on a dating website and flirted with different men. The problem was, none of them met the criteria, and she could only find solace in the company of her horse in between her medical practice. Then Brida, a patient of Judith, finds herself in a troublesome situation as she aspires to write fiction, but was forced to take responsibility as a housewife in a tight income family as her husband Götz was the only breadwinner. The remaining two, Malika and her sister Jorinde, found themselves growing up in a dysfunctional family which troubled them until they reach adulthood.

All five women in this book are connected to each other in some way, and we could only understand while reading between the lines as the narrator recounts the stories of each of them. The style that Daniela Krien uses somehow reminds me of the first film that Richard Linklater wrote and directed, “Slacker” which was released in 1990. The film “Slacker” follows a single day of the life of mostly under-30 bohemians and misfits in Austin, Texas. The camera moves from one person to the next, and there is no central character in the film. It shows how one person acts could become like a domino to other persons, continuously without end. The way Daniela Krien presents the five women is also tragic while funny at the same time, as we could learn how the five women whose daily lives seem to differ a lot, actually share a lot in common.

The choice of the setting, Leipzig, is also an important part of the story. Until German reunification in 1990, Leipzig was part of the German Democratic Republic — communist East Germany, and it was one of its most important cities. During the GDR era, Leipzig remained an important place for the annual Leipzig Book Fair which has been the largest book fair in Germany since 1632 when it topped the fair in Frankfurt am Main. The five women grew up seeing the Berlin Wall fell down, and suddenly western consumerism came into the former GDR. There is also intergenerational conflict in this story, as the five women faced struggles to find unconditional love from their parents. Growing up in a different system has caused troubles beyond the political spectrum, that could only be reckoned by them in silence without no one else to consult.

“What constitutes freedom?” is the main question in this story. In a free system, there is a pressure of choice to choose by ourselves what we want to be in life. With freedom, there are many possibilities, but there is also no guarantee that things will stay as it is. The five women in this story had to face that pressure without any guidance from their parents and the comfort of relying on the state to take care of them. I think this story is really relevant to daily problems that we have to face in the twenty-first century, of crafting genuine human relationships when relationships are turned into digital data consisting of 1 and 0. The unconventional style of Daniela Krien might be frustrating for some people, but I could argue that life could only have meaning when it consists of “happy” and “unhappy” moments.

'Love in Five Acts explores what is left to five women when they have fulfilled their roles as wives, mothers, friends, lovers, sisters and daughters. As teenagers they experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, but freedom brings with it another form of pressure: the pressure of choice.'

As the title indicates, we have five women with five stories and each explores the possibilities faced by those women, each is connected to the other in some way:

Paula, the book seller has lost a child and a husband; to me her story is one where so many of her choices were stripped from her through no fault of her own. It is a story of deep unfathomable grief and her journey back to the surface.

Judith, the doctor is the diametric opposite; she is fiercely independent and free to make her choices, but they leave her emotionally stranded. She searches for a men online, her approach is scientific, her needs appear to be physical but does any of it bring her happiness..

Brida, the writer is faced with a truly modern choice; that of her career or her family. Her story goes beyond the juggling that we are all faced with and exposes what it really is to be a mother of this time.

Malika, the musician has spent her life fighting for attention and recognition. Brought up in a highly intellectual family where opinions are held above emotional support of any kind, her choice in a partner is her form of rebellion.

Finally, Jorinde. the actor is pregnant with her third child and faces a crossroads where she must decide whether she stays in a toxic marriage or provides for her family alone.

Daniela Krien has been compared to Sally Rooney, I would argue that her writing is more akin to Rachel Cusk. Her prose are pared back and clean, her observations incisive and razor sharp. When I read translated fiction I do wonder how the feel and style of a book would change if I read it in its native language; how much of the nuance in a book is lost in language and even at the hands of the translator. That said nothing is lost here, it is a beautifully crafted novel.

Krien seems to build intensity will each woman; with Paula, we are held at arm's length - we have to squint to bring her into focus, she seems so far away. By the time we arrive at Jorinde; she is in full technicolor, fully formed and utterly accessible. The connections between the women, also become more impactful as we go through the book - each offering a taste of what is to come but at the same time giving us an added dimension to the women before.

A slow start, but this novel ended as a first class read for me. Highly recommend.