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Rating: 
Summary: Classic tale of adultery
Review: "Effi Briest" is not just a German version of Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina - it is quite unique in its depiction of a not untypical 19th century marriage. At the age of 17 the impetuous Effi Briest is married to a man 21 years her senior. He is decent enough in his treatment of her, but for Effi being married is a horrible experience, mostly because her husband's job forced her to move to the small town of Kessin where hardly anybody is fit to become her friend. What always strikes me about Fontane is the fairness and the understandig he shows towards his characters. "Effi Briest" is Fontane's psychological insight at his best. None of characters is gloryfied, none vilified. You can identify with Effi and understand what drives her into the arms of another man; but you can also see that her husband simply doesn't understand what he is doing to Effi; actually he's doing his best to make her happy. When the attractive, ageing womanizer Major Crampas moves into town, Effi pities him at first. Later, her attitude changes, but Fontane does not give any details of what's going on between the two. He shows what made it happen - and how Effi and her husband will deal with it. - It is a very entertaining read, not least because of Fontane's excellent low-key sense of humour.
Rating: 
Summary: If you like Austen or Brontë, then this Briest's for you...
Review: "Effi Briest" is considered by many to be THE classic example of German realism, even though it comes late in the movement. Fontane's inspiration for the novel was equal parts "Madame Bovary" and the real-life Ardenne case, in which a respected military officer duelled against and defeated his unfaithful wife's lover. Well crafted and thorough in its sketch of characters and environs, "Effi Briest" articulates tensions rampant in the late nineteenth century but still pertinent today. Effi is still dangerously young when the older and accomplished Baron von Innstetten swoops into her mother's garden and marries her. The couple settle in a distant port town, in a house that gives Effi the creeps to the point that she imagines she is being haunted by the ghost of a Chinese man who died in the town years before. Innstetten, often away on government business, dismisses her fears, but the Major Crampas listens to her, and a liaison develops between him and Effi. Years later, the affair ended, the Innstettens move to Berlin, and the Baron discovers the old letters of the Effi-Crampas correspondence by accident. Without giving away the ending, there's a duel and a divorce and a death. At the mere level of plot, there's plenty here to entertain, but there's much more to the novel than the headline story itself. Fontane forces a look at the Prussian involvement in empire-building projects of the nineteenth century, as well as the debilitating effects of indiscriminate secularization; "Effi Briest" depicts a culture alternately hungry for and wary of romance and enchantment, caught between occasional fascination with the newer world and the comforts of burgeoning technology at home. Douglas Parmée's translation is generally very good, capturing the somewhat informal but authoritative tone of the original. There is one important translation hitch that bugs me, though: he renders the repeated image of the "wide field," the "zu weites Feld," as "too big a subject," and, while this is certainly the connotation, its robs the reader of a little elasticity. To a twenty-first century reader, "Effi Briest" will no doubt come across as a little schlocky and sentimental at times, but no more so than, say, Austen or Brontë. If you enjoy the classics, I think this one endures pretty well. It's a wonderful book, with characters you really get to know and love.
Rating:
Summary: Classic tale of adultery
Review: "Effi Briest" is not just a German version of Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina - it is quite unique in its depiction of a not untypical 19th century marriage. At the age of 17 the impetuous Effi Briest is married to a man 21 years her senior. He is decent enough in his treatment of her, but for Effi being married is a horrible experience, mostly because her husband's job forced her to move to the small town of Kessin where hardly anybody is fit to become her friend. What always strikes me about Fontane is the fairness and the understandig he shows towards his characters. "Effi Briest" is Fontane's psychological insight at his best. None of characters is gloryfied, none vilified. You can identify with Effi and understand what drives her into the arms of another man; but you can also see that her husband simply doesn't understand what he is doing to Effi; actually he's doing his best to make her happy. When the attractive, ageing womanizer Major Crampas moves into town, Effi pities him at first. Later, her attitude changes, but Fontane does not give any details of what's going on between the two. He shows what made it happen - and how Effi and her husband will deal with it. - It is a very entertaining read, not least because of Fontane's excellent low-key sense of humour.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: Fontane's examination of upper class Germany in the nineteenth century ultimately proves to be a scathing indictment of the "me first" mentality, but, and this is important: NOTHING HAPPENS. For about 200 pages Fontane wastes the readers' time by doing what could be done in about 30 pages: He shows how messed up the whole aristocratic scene was. Yeah, so they commit adultery an lie to each others face, you don't have to drag it out for so damn long. All in all, it makes me feel good to NOT be a rich upper class waster. And once the hammer drops (about 35 pages before the book ends) it still doesn't matter that Fontane has built these characters up: They are all the same exact characters in different bodies. I didn't feel anything for Effi or Instetten or anyone else except Roswitha, and her only because her dad chased her aroudn with a red-hot poker when she was a young girl.
Rating:
Summary: A Melancholy and Beautiful Novel
Review: Theodor Fontane's 1895 novel, "Effi Briest," is the moving and melancholy story of Effi, a sprightly teenage girl whose limited interactions with society and the moral bearings of that society are brought into direct and terrible conflict. Fontane gives an all too realistic portrayal of late 19th century Victorian morality and the lives of minor German aristocrats. The novel relates Effi's struggle to negotiate the constraints of society as an extremely young woman who in many ways rejects them all. "Effi Briest" begins as Effi, a fifteen year old girl, enjoys the privileges of wealth and beauty in the small town of Hohen-Cremmen. She plays with the other young girls of her neighbourhood, Herta, Berta, and Hulda. They play childish games and indulge each other in romantic stories and juvenile ambitions. One day, while telling the story of an unrealized love affair between her own mother and a military officer, Geert von Innstetten, Effi is informed that Innstetten, now upwards of forty years old, has come to visit, and has proposed marriage to Effi. Effi cannot but comply. Relocated to the port town of Kessin, Effi finds herself in a commercial center, without the kind of genteel society she is accustomed to, nor the variety or the spontaneity in her lifestyle that she had always enjoyed. Innstetten's workaholism and emotionally detached bearing make life nearly insufferable for her. She is relieved by two men, Gieshubler, a kindly old hunchbacked chemist; and Major Crampas, a 'reformed' libertine whose marriage is unsatisfying. Gieshubler offers Effi a haven of conversation and empathy; Crampas offers her a seductive, liberatory companion. As Innstetten's job absorbs most of his time, he permits and even encourages Effi to spend time with Crampas. A secret correspondence between Effi and Crampas sets the scene for the rest of the novel. "Effi Briest" is really an extraordinary work. Fontane examines throughout the novel the effect of national and international politics, cultural mobility, and trade on the individual. Fontane's presentation of the port town of Kessin, in particular, is fascinating. Here, Effi is truly taken out of the sheltered life of Hohen-Cremmen and exposed to a mobile and commercial society, where people from different cultures and epistemologies flit in and out of her life, like the seemingly liberated woman, Maria Trippelli, in whom Effi takes an intense interest, and Roswitha, a lapsed Catholic nursemaid. In Kessin, she is also encounters a story that haunts the entire novel, the highly evocative and ambiguous story of the Chinaman. Ambiguity is a hallmark of "Effi Briest" and is a major part of the appeal of Fontane's novel. Fontane refrains from making authorial pronouncements or assessments on his characters' actions and situations. To what extent, for example, does Innstetten's political ambition justify the lack of time he devotes to his young wife? Is Effi an agent in her own life, or is she a reactive victim to social morality and impossible standards, especially as a teenage wife? The relationship between Effi's parents highlights this ambiguity, bringing it even into ambivalence, as every difficult situation draws from Effi's father a dismissal of "that's too big a subject". Overall, a very complex and beautiful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Very detailed look at the German aristocracy
Review: This book has the distinction of having very few characters that's not a member of the German aristocracy. Set in Prussia in the 1870's, it is a story about reactionary aristocrats trying to reconcile with their declining political and social importance in the wake of rising industrialization and sudden unification of the German states.
On another level, it is a story of an unhappy marriage and ruinous adultery, written with fastidious details. The pace of the plot is very slow, and Fontane uses no less than half of the book as his exposition to the meat of ths story. Unfortunately, this will turn off a lot of readers, and remains Effi Briest's most glaring shortcoming. But for the more patient readers, this book is a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Come Back Effie ...
Review: This book is a good example of the 19th Century European adultery novel; as such, it rates somewhere above Madame Bovary and below Anna Karenina. Still, Fontane is very under read in the English speaking world. Read this, and pay attention to the details. Fontane is wonderfully subtle and doesn't waste a word. This seems to be the most popular translation, as well.
Rating:
Summary: Come Back Effie ...
Review: This book is a good example of the 19th Century European adultery novel; as such, it rates somewhere above Madame Bovary and below Anna Karenina. Still, Fontane is very under read in the English speaking world. Read this, and pay attention to the details. Fontane is wonderfully subtle and doesn't waste a word. This seems to be the most popular translation, as well.
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