'The Post-Office Girl' has been my commuting book over the last two weeks. Hence, I read this novel at intervals from 7.30 to 8.30 AM and from 5.30 to 6.30 PM stuck in the upper deck of buses packed with people coughing, listening to music, talking at their cellphones, playing online games and talking to each other. And necessarily in this order.
You may therefore understand that my attention span to the written word was somewhat fickle and got easily unnerved by the virulent bursts of either cheap muzak or vicious hack erupting around me.
All that said and all distractions considered, I quite liked this book.
Stefan Zweig brought me in a very specific age and place (diminished, depauperated and disillusioned Austria in the mid 1920s) and was extremely good in putting himself in the shoes of a woman, the postal official Christine seducted and abandoned by a posh life in the high districts of the Swiss Alps.
I would say that the best chunk of this novel is its seductive part, with poor Christine brought to touch the stars of a carefree and wealthy life for a mere week just in time to lose it due to the weakness and silly social concerns of her benefactors.
I've found far less convincing the second part of the novel where Christine's acrimony for her dull and miserable life is boosted up by Ferdinand, who seemed to me very much a spoof of an actual character.
True, there were times in which I blushed reading the most feuilleton-ish bits of 'The Post-Office Girl' and the abrupt ending of the novel (an unfinished one) let me down, but nonetheless I have to praise the author for most of what he accomplished here.
Just forget all those 'modern Cinderella story' and 'a tragic reindition of the Sleeping Beauty fable' tags you will see printed on the cover of your copy of this book. There's nothing or very little of that sort here.
If there's one novel I thought about when I was done with this one that is, oddly enough, 'America' by Franz Kafka.
Well, to be honest 'The Post Office Girl' shares very little with 'America', but in both cases I wished that the author had had the time and the willingness to complete what he had started.
 - Stefan Zweig)