A compelling and thought-provoking exploration of morality and the human condition, Zeh delivers a riveting story that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned.

Set on New Years Day during an innocuous bike ride while on holiday in Lanzarote, Zeh presents an unexpectedly dark tale of Henning, a man who is forced to face his past and uncover the truth about his true nature. Wholly absorbing and cleverly structered, this is a great read.

This was less literary and much more thriller-ish than I was expecting, E Henning is a 30-ish German editor, married with two young children, who's been plagued by debilitating panic attacks. On New Year's Day, he takes an impulsive cycling ride-- a technical climb beyond his abilities and endurance-- up a mountain in Lanzarote. And along the way, he stumbles upon a repressed memory of childhood trauma. I found this novel to be extremely suspenseful, but also not psychologically credible, and frequently quite contrived.

A story with darkness at its heart, yet, for all that New Year is a quick, entertaining read, steeped in thought-provoking psychology

German father of two Henning has impulsively booked his family on a winter holiday in Lanzarote. On New Year's Day, he embarks on a tough uphill bike ride and reflects on his marriage, his family and 'it' - the panic attacks and anxiety that increasingly trouble him. He reaches the top of the hill in an exhausted state and finds himself in familiar surroundings. The events that then unfold reveal a traumatic repressed event he and his sister almost didn't survive.

This is a short and intense novella exploring memory, mental health and trauma. The second half of the book focuses on Henning's childhood experience and while it was compelling I also found almost too uncomfortable to read on. It's a book I admired more than enjoyed.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

CW: mental health, panic attacks, infidelity, neglect, emotional abuse

I very much enjoyed this story. It was wonderfully written. I look forward to the author’s next book!

Anyone who deals with generalized anxiety will strongly relate to the main character. I was getting anxiety just reading about Henning’s anxiety and panic attacks. The premise: he takes his family on a trip to the Canary Islands and while there encounters a strange coincidence that brings back a repressed and traumatic memory. This repressed memory clearly has affected his relationship with his sister and his family unconsciously. And his increasing anxiety and panic attacks are partly related to him never properly dealing with his trauma. I did find his wife to be a little selfish and not understanding of his situation though. She isn’t a very likable character and I found myself annoyed with how she acted towards her husband.

Overall, an engaging story about a man coming to terms with his repressed trauma. The story itself had no surprises but I found the descriptions of anxiety to be incredibly accurate which made it all the more relatable to me.

A novel of repressed memories, Juli Zeh’s New Year (in Alta Price’s translation from the German) smolders underground like the volcanoes of Lanzarote, the island where the novel is set. The protagonist’s cycle trip takes psychological detours into the dark corners of the subconscious. Although I do not generally prefer child points of view in stories, the one in the latter half of New Year is constructed well, and the novel as a whole is a rather gripping although perhaps too quick of a read to stay with me.

A gripping psychological family drama, New Year tells the story of Henning, a troubled man approaching middle age, who takes his wife and two children on holiday to Lanzarote. On New Year’s Day he embarks on a challenging bike ride up a mountain and as he cycles he reflects on his life, his relationships, his work, and particularly on “it”, the panic attacks that he is increasingly beset by. When he reaches his destination, he finds himself reliving a childhood trauma, the cause of these attacks, the memory of which he has repressed. It’s a tense read and a real page-turner, an intelligent and insightful exploration how events in childhood can reverberate down the years and be a potent trigger for anxiety later in life. It’s a relatively simple and straightforward narrative but an extremely powerful one, a short book but a profound meditation on family, love, parenthood and memory, and I found it an engrossing and suspenseful read, well-paced, well-written and very moving.

A rather dark and suspense filled psychological drama that had you turning every page wanting more. I was gripped throughout and left feeling rather disturbed, in a good way

A dazzling portrayal of what it is like living, breathing, being a prisoner of anxiety. It may not be to everyone's taste but I devoured it and the writer is unbelievably talented.

Holidays tend to reveal the submerged fabric of our emotional lives and this is certainly true in Julie Zeh’s novel, New Year. Married Henning secretly books a trip to Lanzarote for Christmas away from their apartment in Gottingen. His wife Theresa isn’t thrilled at first as the trip is hard to make with two small children, aged 2 and 4.

Night after night he surfed the web, looking through images of white sea-foam on black beaches, of palms and volcanos and a landscape that resembled the interior of a stalactite cave. He pored over charts showing average temperatures and forwarded his findings to Theresa. But mostly he clicked through countless images of whitewashed villas for rent. One after another, night after night, until late. He’d plan to stop at a certain point and go to bed, but then he’d click on the next listing. He’d devour each image, voracious as an addict, almost as if he were looking for a specific house.

While Henning looks hungrily at the villas, his final choice is much more modest–a townhouse that’s “within their budget.” Henning’s online search through the villas for rent is traded for a tiny townhouse and a holiday “prix-fixe” dinner at a local hotel. It really isn’t Henning and Theresa’s scene but Theresa has the lucky ability to “make-the-best-of it [is] like a pre-programmed setting she shifts into the moment anything goes awry.” Not so Henning. As the novel continues, it’s clear that Henning suffers from panic attacks. This is something fairly new for Henning, and perhaps this partly explains his obsession to be in Lanzarote for the New Year. When the novel opens, he’s strenuously cycling with the mantra “New Year, new you.” Henning’s cycling trip is infused with various memories: Theresa’s annoying self-focused parents who have relocated to Italy, Henning’s absent father, Werner, Henning’s restless troubled sister, Luna, and Henning’s mother–a woman who made sure that her children knew just how much she sacrificed for her children:


Because of them, she’d renounced friends, men, parties, travel, art, reading, films, theater, stimulating conversations, and a better job. Every day, she declared how, because of them, she was condemned to a life that neither suited her or pleased her.

Predictably, Henning’s mother has no interest in his children. Theresa’s parents, Rolf and Marlies, on the other hand, who visit once or twice a year, are only interested in each other. They bring the grandkids unsuitable gifts, and it’s the Rolf and Marlies show–and every show needs an audience:

As they eat, they yammer on and on mostly with one another, as if they haven’t seen each other in ages. Rolf tells Marlies how lucky they were to find that apartment in Rome. Marlies asks Rolf if he, like she, finds German artisans far superior to Roman ones. They tease one another, correct one another, and enlist Henning and Theresa as audience for a conversation they clearly find riveting and hilarious, all the while thoroughly ignoring Bibbi and Jonas until they start bickering.

The holiday serves to highlight the discord in Henning and Theresa’s life, but one can never run away from one’s childhood, and Henning runs right into a repressed memory.

The holiday and the familial relationships ring all too true. The novel includes child neglect so readers who are sensitive to that issue should be aware.

Review copy. Translated by Alta T. Price

I loved the first half of this novel, which felt more like a short story or novella, resting on the metaphor of fatherhood/the bike ride (and being unprepared). The writing was lovely, like a well-written literary short story that made me love the language and the metaphor all over again. The second half was about a childhood trauma, which again had that "short story" vibe, so while this is technically a novel, it somehow didn't feel like one, more of a character study told in two novellas, that said, it was unique and lovely and unusual and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

There are and have been quite a few novels on the experience of motherhood. Fatherhood, instead, typically receives less attention -- the thought-provoking novella New Year by German writer Juli Zeh is here to fill that gap. Aptly, reviewers have termed it a psychogram, as it explores feelings, good intentions, missteps and misplaced zeal, as well as the sense of exhaustion, insecurity, inadequacy, guilt and resentment of a young father. We meet Henning on holiday on an extenuating bike ride on top of Lanzarote – ill equipped, out of shape, with no water and unsuitable shoes, this trip may as well be a metaphor for his life. It is New Year’s day, and he has left wife and children behind at the hotel – “New Year, new you” is the mantra he keeps repeating himself. In particular, his New Year resolution has to do with get rid of those awful panic attacks and anxiety that plague his quiet life as a literary editor in Göttingen. A ride that will also be a journey of discovery, an exploration of childhood traumas suffered because of parents who are all too human, but bearing long-lasting, devastating consequences and reverberating through generations.

In the first part of the novel, as he pedals his way up the steep hill, Henning gives us access to his past experiences and musings about parenthood (: we learn about his loose upbringing as the child of divorced parents, his wife’s family and his own efforts to balance it all and project a positive, successful image. The shuttling between past and presence reminds a bit of Jenny Offill here); the second part features dramatic events reminiscent of Luiselli's The Lost Children Archive and is fast-paced and propulsive. Despite being a bit slow at the start, the insights, spirited, acute, and totally spot-on, gave me more than a moment of recognition. Short and interesting, an intelligent and thought provoking take on modern parenthood that ends with a gentle smile -- on the way we will never get it right – no matter what we do – and that’s absolutely fine.

My thanks to World Editions for an ARC of this novel via Netgalley in exhange for an honest review.

What a brilliant writer! I can’t fault it. The book zipped along with the kind of prose that is a joy to read. I wanted it to last longer.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this thought provoking novel for review.

The novel is the perfect blend of literary fiction and a gripping mystery story. One cringes to use the cliches,“page turner” and “unputdownable” but it is quite impossible to stop reading the book once you have started it. The reader is carried on by the suspense Zeh creates and is desperate to know how the story ends.

The characterisation is perfect. Henning is the father of two and seems to be happily married. There are the usual ups and downs of family life but nothing out of the ordinary. However, Henning is a bit of a mystery. Why does he feel so alienated and why have these constant panic attacks? He at Lanzarote around New Year for a holiday with his family; he decides to cycle up a steep mountain to Femés. He fights against the bitter cold and the steep incline and is almost delirious with exhaustion when he reaches the deserted town. The obstacles are not merely physical but psychological as well. But why does it all seem so familiar? Has he been here sometime before when he was a child? Are there some repressed memories which are waiting to escape?

The scene shifts to several years earlier when Henning, a child of four, and his younger sister, find themselves abandoned by the parents and completely alone with almost nothing to eat or drink. Zeh brilliantly captures the tense situation and especially the voice of the children as they battle to keep some vestige of normalcy under impossible circumstances. Once again Zeh raises a lot of questions the answers of which we are desperate to know. Why have the parents abandoned the children? When will they return? How will the children manage without their parents? Does this event which must have been very traumatic for the children, especially for Henning—who is older and is responsible for taking care of his sister—ruin his life and is it the main cause of his panic attacks? The description of the children who are forced to fend for themselves and their joy at hearing a car arrive is heart rending and deeply moving.

The story is narrated in such a vivid and compelling manner that the reader feels he is witnessing the events.

The novel is unusual but it is a tour de force and is highly recommended

Lanzarote on New Year’s Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children—yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year’s Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.
This book is perfection.
I loved the emotions this book puts the reader through.

This book was so suspenseful. I found myself unable to put it down as I had to know where it was going to lead. The depictions of anxiety and trauma were really well done and the exploration of family relationships was engrossing. What began as a new years day bike ride developed into a psychological thriller and I loved it!

An incredibly well-crafted book in which the atmosphere builds and builds until you almost cannot bear it anymore. I couldn’t put it down and finished it within a few hours. Masterful.