At the centre of this novel, the first by the bestselling Austrian author to be translated into English, is a family and at the centre of the family is a young woman, Maria. The family live in a valley on the western edge of Austria – it is 1914 – and are known by the nearby villagers as “die Bagage” (the undesirables, the riff-raff) because they are poor and because “the kids are half wild”. And Maria is a woman whose exquisite beauty provokes both lust and resentment.
So when Maria’s husband, Josef, is conscripted to serve in the first world war, the postman is a bit too pleased to be delivering Josef’s call-up papers and imagines himself “the sort of man who could show a lot of tender affection if it came to it”.
It is not an enlightened society. Josef, not trusting his wife, asks the village mayor to “watch out for Maria” while he is at the front; the decision may have been unwise, given that the mayor wonders: “Can it be that such a beautiful woman is meant for just one man?”
The scene is set for a story – sometimes horrible, sometimes funny – as tumultuous and chaotic as the family it depicts. The book circles dramatic events – a mysterious pregnancy (“Is the brat mine?”), an overdose of schnapps, public shaming, too many deaths to name – over and over. “To bring order to memory,” we’re told, “would that not be lying?” But as well as the surface diversions, this is a novel about what’s hidden and what happens when it is revealed. “Those thoughts that lurk in the back of the mind… They launch themselves into the main narrative and change everything.”
What distinguishes Last House Before the Mountain from a hundred other family stories is its charm: narrated by Maria’s granddaughter, it confides in the reader intimately. And when we learn that the story is based on Helfer’s own family, the final moving paragraph strikes the reader like a knife to the heart.
• Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer (translated by Gillian Davidson) is published by Bloomsbury (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
