Seven Years

A German architect with a beautiful wife cannot give up his desire for an otherwise unremarkable Polish immigrant. Despite talking to her initially as a joke, a dare, he makes her his mistress and returns to her over the years. In this account of their affair, feverish as an Orhan Pamuk or Knut Hamsun tale, motivations are by subterfuge: "I thought what a thin veneer civilization is, and how easily it cracks when pain or hatred or lust take over in individuals." Swiss novelist Stamm (Unformed Landscape) offers a classic love triangle that reads like a contemporary European version of Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. Theories of architecture are employed throughout to great if heavy-handed effect ("I remember something that Aldo Rossi had said, that every room contains an abyss"), and though readers may not identify with or even like the characters, the plot moves quickly and winds in satisfying ways.