Reviews

Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser

Only show reviews with written explanations

joshbarrett's review

adventurous reflective medium-paced

4.25

A great collection of pseudo-autobiographical short stories from an author who’s writing style I find uniquely refreshing

Walser figured out pandemic living: you take your little walk, you write your little story, try to make a little cheer out of what you have been given with your day, and you send it along to your friends and the local paper. The collection of short pieces (only three of the 60-plus in here come close to 10 pages) in this NYRB edition are uniformly delightful ruminations on the mundanity that fills up our lives.

logantmartin's review

Go to review page

reflective slow-paced

4.5

It's helpful to read these prose pieces less as a collection of short stories and more as a series of journal entries. Walser often fictionalizes his life, referring to himself in the third person and probably augmenting or adding things whole cloth, but these works are clearly self-reflective. Reading these, I've been inspired to add a little ✨pizazz✨ to my own journal, writing them with a bit more voice.

alice_12's review

Go to review page

reflective fast-paced

3.75

beepbeepbooks's review

Go to review page

5.0

absolute delight. Walser teeters on the edge of literature and a scrap of paper you cast off into the street

drifterontherun's review

Go to review page

2.0

I have a number of New York Review Books Classics, as I'm sure you do. There are many, indeed, classic works of literature that are only available as an NYRB edition.

They're beautiful books — in design and content — and back in February or March of this year the publisher announced that it was starting a monthly subscription.

Now, you know me. I love a good book subscription, particularly one that includes books in translation. I mean, is there anything better than getting book mail? So I, of course, signed up to my fourth active subscription service.

"Little Snow Landscape" is the first of the NYRB Classics I received as part of my subscription. I'd heard of the Swiss writer Robert Walser before but had never read him.

I wish this hadn't been my introduction to him.

Because these aren't really stories, they're more like sketches, two or three pages each. A man walking down the street, a visit to relatives, some people chat about something I can't really remember ...

To be honest, I can't remember much of anything about this collection ... except for how boring it all was.

I've been struggling to get through "Little Snow Landscape" for the past couple of months now, I set it aside for a few weeks just because I couldn't bear it any longer. If you or I had written this, nobody would give a damn. It certainly wouldn't be published. But because Walser is a well-regarded 20th-century novelist, here it is.

The first NYRB Classic I've ever read that I didn't like. I recommend the subscription — not the book.