Showing 1-4 out of 4 reviews.

• This is a story about how “doing the right thing” and trying to be kind can lead to terrible, unintended consequences, and about how difficult it is to choose between the unselfish “should” and the more rational, selfish “want”.Anton Hofmiller, a young officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, is invited to dinner by a rich landowner in the small town where he is stationed. After the meal, to be polite, he asks the teenaged daughter of the house to dance. But he has not noticed she is “crippled” (this is the term used in the book). She is upset and he is embarrassed, and he rushes away. But the family invites him again and again, so he decides the least he can do is keep her company when he can, and he becomes a regular visitor to the house. She, of course, takes it for much more than he does, and is soon fantasizing of their being together once she is “cured”. (We, the readers, realize this will never happen – it is not clear what the various characters believe). He is horrified to learn of her strong feelings, and is also further drawn in by knowingly but unthinkingly fanning her hopes of recovery after a conversation with her doctor. He doesn’t love her, and he knows she will never be cured. He is torn between, on the one hand, his guilt at letting things get this far, coupled with his certain knowledge that the truth could, literally, kill her, and on the other hand his desperate desire to escape the situation by whatever means possible. He goes back and forth, basing his words and actions on these opposing desires. As the book is set in the summer of 1914, we do in fact know how he “escapes”, but we don’t know how the relationship and the story end until we get there.In addition to the story, the setting is also great. The small provincial town, the army garrison, constantly training, never fighting. The dinners, the cafes, the card playing, the uniforms, the horses, the regulations, the streets, the boredom, and the mix of nationalities that made up the empire. All very evocative. It reminded me strongly of The Radetzsky March, which I also read this year.What really makes this book great, though, is the style. The story is a story, being told some 20 years after the events. Told in the first person by Hofmiller, it isn’t to us, but to another character we meet briefly in a prologue, never to be seen directly again. In fact the whole book begins with a different story, with the narrator telling us that he met a friend who, spotting Hofmiller, told the narrator that he was a famous WWI hero, and told him the story of that heroism. When the narrator meets Hofmiller subsequently, Hofmiller bitterly describes his real, unheroic self, and this is the story of the book. Along the way there are many other “story” episodes – someone tells Hofmiller how the landowner came by his wealth, the girl’s doctor tells of the various cures he has tried on her, another tells how the doctor has married a blind patient he could not cure but did not want to abandon, an ex-colleague who has left the regiment and become rich tells Hofmiller of his terrible troubles along the way, trying to dissuade him from following the same path, and Hofmiller finishes by telling the narrator of his experience of the war and subsequent events. I personally find this a very powerful style, which Zweig adopted very well from his other, all much shorter, works to this, his only long novel. I loved it.I don’t know if there is more than one translation, but the one I read was by Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt.

  5.00 out of 5

  JanetinLondon

• Stefan Zweig's treatise on the dark nature of pity is a fantastic read for several reasons. The plot is a page turner with deeply developed characters such as the narrator, Anton Hofmiller, an Austrian cavalry officer who struggles with the inner voices of pity, honor, and self-indulgence. There is Edith von Kekesfalva the beautiful, tempestuous lame girl whose ambivalence about her plight is the cause of the undoing of multiple characters and Doctor Condor, the physician who espouses fascinating ideas about the medical profession in general and Edith in particular. Those are just three of the characters! The use of language is marvelous, which means that all three of my personal criteria for outstanding literature, plot, character, and language, have been met and then some! 350 pages flew by!

  5.00 out of 5

  hemlokgang

• A great novel, hard to follow for its increasing carrying guilt of the main character.

  4.00 out of 5

  Luli81

• I have to admit, I'm pretty torn in my opinion of Beware of Pity. The story is really interesting, but the characters are so unlikeable that I read this novel with continuous dismay; the thing is, I couldn't help but keep reading it.In the early 1900's, Toni, a young officer in the Austrian Empire, makes a blunder at a social occasion by asking his host's daughter, Edith, who he does not know is crippled, to dance. Mortified by his mistake, he sends flowers as apology and thus begins to regularly visit Edith and her wealthy family out of pity.In a short period of time, the emotionally fragile Edith falls in love with the young lieutenant, much to his horror. Out of guilt he plays along with Edith, inspiring her to seek a hopeful new treatment so that she may be with him.Although the characters in Beware of Pity irked me to no end, particularly the self-absorbed main character Toni and he hysterical Edith, I quickly became immersed in the plot. I can't say that I enjoyed Beware of Pity or felt much empathy for any of its characters (it often felt too melodramatic), but I was always curious as to what would happen next, kind of like watching a reality tv show where most of the characters are repulsive.

  3.50 out of 5

  mynovelreviews

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