Barbara Isn't Dying: A Novel

by Alina Bronsky, Tim Mohr (Translator)

Overview

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A bittersweet and hilarious novel about a marriage whose decades-old routine is suddenly upended.

Walter Schmidt has lived his whole life within the narrow, “comfortable” confines of traditional gender roles: he has made it to retirement without learning how to fry an egg or use a vacuum cleaner. After all, he could always count on his wife, Barbara. But when one morning she can’t get up from bed anymore, everything changes.

With biting humor and great warmth, Alina Bronsky writes about how Walter, nearing the end of his life, is suddenly forced to reinvent himself as a caregiver and house-husband, and become the caring partner he never was in all his years with Barbara.

Little by little, Walter’s rough facade begins to crumble—and with it his old certainties about his life and family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609458423
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/09/2023
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	128,049
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Alina Bronksy is the author of Broken Glass Park (Europa, 2010); The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (Europa, 2011), named a Best Book of 2011 by The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly; Just Call Me Superhero (Europa, 2014), Baba Dunja’s Last Love (Europa, 2016), and My Grandmother’s Braid (Europa, 2021). Born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia, Bronsky now lives in Berlin.

Tim Mohr is an award-winning translator of authors such as Wolfgang Herrndorf, Charlotte Roche, and five books by Alina Bronsky. He has also collaborated on memoirs by musicians Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, and Paul Stanley of KISS. His own writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine, and Inked, among other publications, and he spent several years as a staff editor at Playboy magazine, where he edited Hunter S. Thompson, John Dean, and Harvey Pekar, among others. He is the author of Burning Down the Haus, a history of political struggle and punk music in East Germany. Prior to starting his writing career he earned his living as a club DJ in Berlin.

Editorial Reviews

“[Barbara Isn't Dying] is a Russian doll of a novel, the hidden story of a difficult marriage slowly revealed through the stages of a husband’s care for his terminally ill wife. This is a wise, carefully constructed novel about fragile hidden identities, whose ending reads like a deeply felt beginning.”—Elena Lappin, The Washington Post 

“Barbara Isn’t Dying is another short yet substantial novel from Alina Bronsky. Deftly translated by Tim Mohr, the book has echoes with two of the Russian-born German author's recent works which feature aging protagonists... warm, poignant and acerbically funny... a sharp-eyed and unsentimental character study of one man and his blinkered view of the world around him.”—Malcolm Forbes, Star Tribune

“Bronsky’s picture of Walter resonates as deeply poignant, ultimately leaving the reader with a profound sympathy and resigned acceptance of life’s challenges, the process of aging, and ultimately the creation of a new way of life.”—Frank Valish, Under the Radar

“[Barbara Isn't Dying is] a remarkably endearing story of a man who realizes he’s taken his loved ones for granted, finds the flaws in his worldview, and works, in this last stage of his life, to change.”—Arianna Rebolini, Bustle, “22 Beach Reads to Bring on Vacation This Summer”

“Skirting sentimentality, and sprinkling what could be a sad tale with plenty of welcome humor, Bronsky makes us root for her unlikely hero.”—Booklist

“In this tragicomic tale, Herr Schmidt wakes one morning to discover nobody has made the coffee yet—and his immediate thought must be that his wife has died in the night, because what other explanation could there be? Bronsky covers a lot of emotional ground in just 182 pages; I recommend Fredrik Backman fans take a look.”—Anne Bogel, Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club

“Cheerful, clever, and full of compassion.”—WDR 3 Mosaic

“Brimming with dark wit and great warmth.”—Sound & Media

“Bronsly’s delicate detachment, her sense of comedy, her feeling for the weird and absurd, make Barbara Isn’t Dying Yet a delight.”—WDR 5

“The humor is biting, the characters idiosyncratic, the laughter spontaneous—readers will love this new book by Bronsky both for its unsympathetic antihero and for how connected they ultimately feel to him.”—emotion

Praise for Alina Bronsky

“Bronsky has a Dickensian flair for writing about miserable children—or, rather, the miseries of childhood.”—Vulture

“Alina Bronsky brilliantly keeps the mood funny and uplifting throughout with quirky characters and irreverent humor. My Grandmother’s Braid celebrates the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.”—Apple Books, Book of the Month

“[Alina Bronsky] is at her best when evoking family dysfunction and powerful, mean old women, and both aspects are promised here [ . . . ] Sounds like a riot, as ever.”—Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2021

“My Grandmother’s Braid is written in a style that seems at turns facetious and tragic; one finds themselves snorting with laughter during the most inappropriate moments [ . . . ] This book is funny, maddening, and surprisingly sentimental and compassionate. It seems incredible to flip through the one hundred and fifty or so pages that comprise this novel and realize how much there is still to talk about.”—Barbara Halla, Asymptote

“Bronsky’s comic take on grandmother makes way for empathy [ . . . ] Bronsky depicts challenges the ragtag band of characters is up against through gritty city scenes and no-bones-about-it biases. The world of this novel is small, but densely packed with humorous pathos.”—Mari’s Book Reviews

“This is a novel about a dysfunctional family and the weakness of the human spirit, written with biting humor, fabulous dialogue, and a good deal of heart. A slim novel that has the power to surprise us when we’re least expecting it.”—Heaven Ali

“Thrilling and moving in equal measure.”—Berliner Zeitung

“A marvelous tragicomedy told with such lightness as if the author were hovering a few inches above the ground.”—Sächsische Zeitung

“Bronsky is not only a master of the unwritten, but also a magician of perspective and, most importantly, of empathy towards her characters.”—Die Tageszeitung

“Alina Bronsky has written a little masterpiece. Filled with dark humor, at times cynical, My Grandmother’s Braid is an extraordinarily readable novel, rich in dialogue, and extremely entertaining.”—Gießener Allgemeine

From the Publisher