And Never Said a Word Book

One of Böll's earlier novels, that really did pull me in promptly, as he paints a realistic and broad picture of society in a grey and rubbled post-war Germany. Through a broken marriage, over the course of a weekend, Böll's richly textured narrative is alive with the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, as the two narrators, Fred and Käte Bogner, who are now living apart, struggle with their relationship and with poverty in a unnamed city. Married for fifteen years, and with three children, they now meet up just once a month after payday for joyless sexual encounters in cheap hotel rooms. All this came about after Fred, an ex prisoner of war, and someone who clearly has an obsession with death left his wife and kids because he, by nature a now peace-loving man, and opposed to any form of violence, finds himself turning aggressive towards his loved ones. He works a meaningless job, bearly surviving on his wages, but he finds small moments of contentment in bars and cafes as he plays on the slot machines, and drinks and smokes away the money he borrows. Käte, the meek wife and mother, who tries to make sense of it all, is equal parts strength and weakness, and presents Fred with the ultimatum of either facing up to his responsibility as a husband and father or he will end up cast adrift permanently. The two, still bound together by an emotional thread, and by the love of their children, struggle for the answers to questions they both ponder on.

Fred Bogner is one of Böll's unheroic heroes who is victimized by forces beyond his control and comprehension. The hopelessness, isolation, and injustices around him pervert his natural emotions and responses. He sleeps in bombed-out houses, stairwells, or wherever he can find warth to get his head down without human obligations. His early unhealthy interest in death, started as a seven-year-old-boy, as he secretly followed his mother's coffin to the cemetery. He is now perverted into a morbid fascination with dying. He hangs around cemeteries attending the funerals of strangers, and is often invited home by someone bereaved to listen to the life story of people of whom he knows nothing but their final resting place. Fred's hope of improving the quality of his life has dwindled to the point where he is beginning to show the signs of a suicidal fascination with defeat. The story is powerful told in a straightforward and clear style, and Böll once again, like other novels I have read by him, demonstrates his peerlessness in conveying the authentic feel of a modern German city recovering in the post-war years.