I’ve said before that I enjoy reading historical fiction where a house is the focal point and the story features characters across centuries (A Wayside Tavern/The Town House and Here come to mind) and so I picked up Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Visitation with no small amount of anticipation. Set in the German countryside near the eastern part of Berlin, it features a country home that begins as a parcel of land owned by a mayor of the town. The land is parceled out and one section is sold, whereupon a house is built. The story itself weaves in and out of the 20^th century, touching on the major events of the century (the world wars, nazis, communism, the rise and fall of East Germany, etc.) but in a way that is not blatantly done. Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure which period we were in until a breadcrumb was dropped, often a subtle mention of a devastating or horrific action. Most characters are not given proper names, only descriptors or titles. And the recurring role of the gardener serves to anchor the house and its land in the passage of time.

The book is written in an poetic, dreamlike style, so that I felt almost—but not quite—lulled into a soft-focus kind of reading. One of the lessons I took from the story is how transitory a human life is compared to the land(s) in which it is lived. Visitation was a unique and enjoyable book.