This was different as each chapter is a short story of a deceased member of the village. Some of the chapters are written that you don't realise that the person speaking is deceased, and various members will make an appearance in other stories which gives you the community feel you would get in a village with everyone at least knowing someone.

The translation was well done as the story read smoothly, and you certainly didn't have to try and work out what was ment.

It did take me a while to read as i wasn't ingrossed and did get a bit bored, and therefor i kept getting distracted by other books that had a faster pace.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy to read and leave an honest review.

Seethaler has a wonderful knack of creating tiny little snippets of stories which magically come together in this new book, and Charlotte Collins' translation managed to keep the quirks of the original German whilst being a fluent read.

The idea of the history of a town being told by the residents of the cemetery was brilliant and it was like peeping in through people's windows and seeing snap shots of their lives, and gradually realising how interlinked everyone was.

A Whole Life by the same author remains my favourite so far but I will continue to eagerly await further translations of Seethaler's books

The Field is the third book I read by Robert Seethaler, and I think it will be the last one. I had previously read A Whole Life and The Tobacconist by him and loved each. Unfortunately, he disappointed me a bit this time. I could not find that charm from his previous novels in this book.

Such a beautiful collection of vignettes of interconnected lives lived in a small town, told with the simplest prose, yet revealing so much about each soul and their connections. A book I wanted to rattle through, but then regretted just how fast I sped through such perfect personal histories.

Have you ever been in a graveyard and wondered about all the histories and stories that the people buried under the tombstones could tell? Robert Seethaler takes this as his inspiration for a series of short passages from a wide range of characters (some interlinked).
Some talk about highlights in their lives, others tragedies and many about the way in which they died. It has less fantasy than George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo and more about day-to-day living, reminiscing about partners missed or the guilt of a life wasted.
I thought that, given the title, I was going to be reading more of Seethaler's lovely nature writing so I was initially disappointed but the individual stories are arresting and still beautifully written.
The reader experiences all the possibilities that life can hold, but told from the dead.

What should a dead person talk about? Would a reader be most interested in reading about trivialities, wise reflections on life or the last breaths of the deceased? That’s what I asked myself before I started this book.

Through short anecdotes, the dead of Paulstadt introduce you to their town. It is a town filled with (imperfect) people who share both the good and the bad, their successes and their regrets. As they share their stories with you from their graves, having completed their lives, they are in the right position to look back on it all. Robert Seethaler skillfully blends observations and remarks about the end and beginning of human lives. His chosen perspective lets him connect life and death in an interesting way.

Anecdotes
A good example of this is how Louise says that only suicides and lovers know what it’s like to jump into a river, even though you know it flows into an abyss. Hanna talks to us about her deathbed as if she has all the time in the world. Ironically, time is all she has left after her death. The contrast with the content of the narrative – someone’s last hours slipping away from them – makes this anecdote special.

At times, the story feels poetic, such as when Gerd recounts the deaths of his father and mother. The anecdote that stuck with me the most is Stephanie’s: I could feel the emotion – more the farmer’s than her own – when she left her daughter alone with him. Sometimes you read more about someone’s thoughts than you want to know. What I appreciate most about The Field is the different voices of the narrators and the wide range of emotions they show. Not every anecdote is interesting, just as you don’t find every person you meet in real life interesting.

Reading experience
It wasn’t until I had read a third of the book that I began to appreciate the story. Each new person whose life I shared sucked me further into the book. Jumping from head to head, like a parasite taking over the (dead of) Paulstadt. Reading these stories of the dead makes you feel alive. It is soothing, this story of life and death in Paulstadt. It feels like the author is paving the way for something bigger.

The Field is not a book I would recommend to most people; in fact, I would not recommend it to anyone I know. That’s mainly because it takes a while to begin to appreciate the story. Until then, the book can be boring. But if you are in the mood for a book like this, it might impress you.

*Many thanks to Robert Seethaler, Pan Macmillan, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
A small plot of barren land is donated to the town and becomes the final resting place of its inhabitants. Their are the voices we hear/read in this unusual novel. The dead tell us their stories while lying underground, often close to their relatives, and paint the portrayal of the town where they loved, hated, suffered and died.
The idea behind this novel is original as it is not meant be be a horror or a ghost story. In fact, the reader does not feel as if they are reading tales told by the deceased, and this is what makes The Field an unusual read. The voices sound like those of the living, and some observations they make about their passing away could not be said more naturally.
The translation is good and the novel reads smoothly.