On the Phone

On their 20th anniversary a man invites his wife to dinner to announce that he is leaving her. What is initially a shock for Elfriede Schweiger, however, soon opens new possibilities for her, as she receives her law degree, sets up shop as an attorney, and embarks on simultaneous affairs with two men. As a recently divorced woman, successful in a male-dominated field, yet fearful of aging, she attempts to balance her affairs while still carrying on her career. The ensuing tale depicts how the feminist strivings of a professional female in a provincial Austrian town are thwarted by her self-destructive attachments to the men in her life. On the Phone tells the story of two years in Elfriede's life in the form of a monologue to an anonymous listener over the phone. Aloof, laconic, and full of irony, the narrative causes this period of upheaval to pass like a parade before the reader's view. The author dissects the sensitivities of a woman in the prime of her life, recounting moments of hope, disappointment, love, self-doubt, and megalomania. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, Grill's breathless cascade of sentences wring out every bit of a reader's feelings and compassion. The text is a fiendish dollhouse, and its characters diabolical Barbies and Stepford men. Where today's literature frequently depicts young women collecting the scalps of men, here it is nakedly demonstrated by a mature woman. The absurdity of this fictional confessional narrative of a middle-aged woman will provoke both laughter and tears. This is a story of a modern European woman trying desperately to be modern and European, and managing in the end only to be human. When Evelyn Grill writes about peoplewhose life is at a dead-end, she succeeds through her writing in finding a route to freedom for them.

About the Author :
Evelyn Grill was born in 1942 in Upper Austria, and studied law in Linz. She has lived in Freiburg, Germany, since 1986. Since 1980, she has been worked as a free-lance writer, has been published in anthologies and literary magazines, and appeared on radio. Her books include "Rahmenhandlunger" (1984), "Winterquartier" (1993), "Wilma" (1994), "Hin'ber" (1999), "Ins Ohr" (2002), "Vanitas oder Hofst'tters Begierden" (2005), "Der Sammler" (2006), and "Sch'ne K'nste" (2007). "Winterquartier" has been translated into English and published as Winter Quarters by Ariadne Press. The translator, Renate Latimer, teaches at Auburn University. Her translations of contemporary German and Austrian short stories and poems have appeared in "Short Story International, New Orleans Review, Southern Humanities Review, Shenandoah, Osiris, " and "Beacons." They include 25 short stories by Herbert Eisenreich translated and collected, "Farewell to Love" (Ariadne Press, 1993), Inge Merkel's 400-page 1987 novel "Odysseus and Penelope: An Ordinary Marriage" (Ariadne Press, 2000), and "Memoirs from a Madhouse" by Christine Lavant (Ariadne Press, 2004).