Heinrich von Kleist II

I cannot help riffling through The Marquise of O and Other Stories before my vacation starts and this title novella, which isn't all that long, has a grabby, switchbacking plot that pulls me right in as soon as I read the first sentence:

In M-, a large town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O-, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-bred children, published the following notice in the newspapers: that, without her knowing how, she was in the family way; that she would like the father of the child she was going to bear to report himself; and that her mind was made up, out of consideration for her people, to marry him.

One sentence contains more plot and enough appeal to pull me in. I realize that the Marquise, who has a spotless reputation and is already a mother--to dispel whatever doubts I might have harbored otherwise about what I'll read subsequently, namely, that she is pregnant and has no idea how such a thing might have happened.

This is the power of Kleist, who usually gives very little physical description of his characters, but tells you what sort of people they are. His stories usually proceed in a series of twists and turns that keep reversing each one of our assumptions and expectations. The convulution jars one's sense of who the characters are, of what happened, and of what will happen.

I have to stop or I'll finish the whole story collection before the vacation starts!