While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor's jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination – with horrific consequences.
"Schnitzler was a remarkable and versatile talent who adapted for his artistic purposes both the new techniques of psychoanalysis and what was later to be known as the stream of consciousness." - John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement
"What makes it a tour de force is that the story is old, in a superbly sustained stream-of-consciousness, entirely from Else's point of view." - Gilbert Adair, Evening Standard
While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor's jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination – with horrific consequences.
"Schnitzler was a remarkable and versatile talent who adapted for his artistic purposes both the new techniques of psychoanalysis and what was later to be known as the stream of consciousness." - John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement
"What makes it a tour de force is that the story is old, in a superbly sustained stream-of-consciousness, entirely from Else's point of view." - Gilbert Adair, Evening Standard
