We're Flying

In his latest, Swiss writer Stamm (Seven Years) offers the reader insights into the human character, sometimes discomfiting and seemingly irrational but at the same time oddly familiar. A husband faced with his wife's probable slow death follows the hospital's instructions by packing a suitcase with items that his wife will clearly never use and then has no idea what to do with the suitcase. A writer looking for a quiet sanctuary to complete a work in progress takes a room in an abandoned hotel with no electrical power or running water and in which dinner consists of unheated, canned ravioli. A middle-aged, childless couple, worn down by habitual communication, find themselves confronted with a disruptive, ill-behaved family in the neighboring villa while on summer holiday and find themselves strangely aroused.