The Fifth Year

Four-year-old Marili learns about life and death and discovers the beauty of the natural world in this deeply perceptive and sensuous 1951 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer (The Wall). The story takes place over the course of a year in an idyllic alpine forest, where Marili is being raised by her maternal grandparents. Her grief-stricken grandmother explains that she’s not Marili’s mother, who died along with her four sons—three in war, and the youngest, Max, at five, from diphtheria. Sadness hangs over the house during the gloomy winter until the first ray of February sunlight lands in a “yellow rectangle... on the kitchen floor.” In summer, Marili explores the surrounding meadows by herself, pushing past her fear of the unknown, and is enchanted by the flowers, especially the fire lilies, which “seemed to come to life under her breath.” The strong-willed and curious girl, who prays with her back turned to the painting of Jesus in her bedroom and beats up a neighbor boy who threatens to drown a litter of kittens, carries glimmers of the adult heroines in Haushofer’s fierce later work, and the story grows unsettling when Marili alarms her grandparents by catching a fever like the one Max had. The main event, though, is Haushofer’s painterly depiction of the landscape, as when she describes how the fog lifts as winter approaches and “a different color... shimmered yellow and red through the milky veils.” It’s a stunner. (May)