Family Secrets and the Contemporary Novel. Literary Explorations in the Aftermath of the Third Reich. By Elizabeth Snyder Hook. Rochester: Camden House, 2001. Pp. x + 177. $55.

Elizabeth Snyder Hook's Family Secrets and the Contemporary Novel addresses a topic that has been central to scholarship in the humanities and social sciences over the past decades: the repercussions of the Third Reich on contemporary Germany (including the former GDR) and Austria. Her monograph develops contextualized close readings of five novels: Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster (1976), Thomas Bernhard's Auslšschung (1986), Peter Schneider's Vati (1987), Elfriede Jelinek's Die Ausgesperrten (1980), and Elisabeth Reichert's Februarschatten (1984). Snyder Hook has chosen these novels for her project because of "their incisive depictions of the continued impact of National Socialism upon the postwar German and Austrian family" (p. 7). Her selection was furthermore guided by her interest in literature written by authors who cannot be counted as immediated perpetrators since they were either children (Peter Schneider) and teenagers (Christa Wolf and Thomas Bernhard) during the Third Reich or were born at its very end (Elfriede Jelinek and Elizabeth Reichert). Finally, Snyder Hook makes the literary historical argument that this group of texts is a representative sample that "shows persuasively and distinctly how the lingering burden of the Third Reich intrudes not only on the German and Austrian psyche, but upon its literature as well" (p. 7).

Sabine von Dirke
University of Pittsburgh