From the Umberplatzen - a novel by Susan Tepper

Kitty is in her late thirties when she leaves her unhappy marriage and American homeland behind to settle abroad in Germany where she stays for a period of two years.  Here she meets the brilliantly eccentric German physicist she refers to as M.  He is passionate about many things, including the making and flying of beautiful silk kites.  The two begin a love affair.  Told in flashback, after Kitty’s return to the states, each of these interlocking flash-fiction stories weaves an element of their love relationship into a gift or item he sends her almost daily through the mail.  Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler has called From the Umberplatzen “a brilliant mosaic of a novel.”     


The stories in Susan Tepper’s “From the Umberplatzen” will haunt you. They are short, sharp, and ruthless in their tender investigations of memory and loss. — Steve Almond, author of God Bless America


Susan Tepper knows extraordinary things about love, about its delicate negotiations and its quiet ravishments. She also is a master of the short short story form who has assembled forty eight stunning, small-scale stories into a brilliant mosaic of a novel. From the Umberplatzen is a dazzling artistic accomplishment. — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain


This is a perceptive love story. — Simon Perchik, author of Hands Collected

  • Paperback: 56 pages
  • ISBN-13: 978-0982711545
  • $12.95

9 comments:

  1. This book is a tiny masterpiece, from the exquisite, stand-alone "chapters," to their culmination in a universal when savored as a whole. The syntactical choices are clever, the punctuation (or lack thereof) brilliant. I loved this little gem of a book that says so much in such subtle and intricate ways. It's worth another read, and then another, to fully appreciate its excellence.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A radiant, haunting book full of nuance and genuine feeling. Susan Tepper uses magic to weave this world from filaments of memory, yearning, uncertainty, affection, lust and regret. Story by story, with exquisite description in measured pace, she brings her own, her narrator's, and the reader's perceptions to bear on a single artifact or message created by M., a different one every day, imbuing them with a numinous power. A tiny star cut from silver kite silk is drifting across the back of my eyelids as I write this....

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is a masterful example of an inventive mind at work. It gets under your skin. It works its way into your brain and your heart until you have no choice but to sing its many praises to anyone who will listen. Delightful. Playful.Romantic. Cynical. The kind of modern reading experience you are craving right now. But be forewarned it is a very hearty meal. You will be satisfied, but you will also have deepening dreams about it later on.Darryl Price

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love this book—I carry it with me at all times and whip it out at a moment's notice. These stories are very special, full of depth and spirit. They resonate with the trees and people and cafes and markets and apartments of my German city neighborhood. Tepper creates an entire world that spins around the two central characters, a world that is reminiscent of places in the shade where love happens where wine is deeply red, where there’s no short supply of the right shoes, where the sky’s filled with kites. — I read the book today on a market while queuing for food. “Never heard of that Umberplatzen tree,” a woman said next to me who must've read over my shoulder. I tried to explain but ended up simply giving her the book while we queued. Because I won’t part from it and neither should you when you get your copy. When she gave it back her face had a dreamy expression and she seemed sated. Just lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  5. From the Umberplatzen is a long hot summer, a lovemaking of coffee and croissant, it is the profane and sacred, it is Kitty Kat and the mysterious M. In Susan Tepper's work I find the radiant poetic decadence of Djuna Barnes, the undertow of light and dark in equal measure,and an added spice of quirky humor. Not only a chiseled, lyrical work, it is pleasurable to read.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Absorbing and brilliantly written, this book deserves more than one read. I very highly recommend it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. From the Umberplatzen held me captive from beginning to end. I was mesmerized by this steamy love affair that takes the reader on a journey through the psyche. Tepper paints each evocative scene in brilliance and is a master at work. You won't be able to put this book down once you start reading. Get a copy now! You'll be happy you did!

    ReplyDelete
  8. What I love about this novel in short, flash fiction chapters, is the understated love affair, but how it captures an essence so thoroughly, of two untimely lovers, their romance and their dailiness, like only Susan Tepper can. It is magical, and heart-wrenching, has off-tilted humor and deep pathos that ring so true to the heart's journey through love. The nicknames, the repetition of what is sent as a gift through the mail that comes perfectly at the end of each chapter, the deft use of spare language evokes that landscape so perfectly. I will read it again, and again, and again.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just posted my review on the Metazen blog... http://metazen.tumblr.com/post/16287603538/from-the-umberplatzen-by-susan-tepper-a-review-by

    ReplyDelete

Please give us a glowing review: