This was a perfect novella to read between Christmas and New Year - exactly when this story is set.

It was a story which is essentially about families, and those difficult relationships which come with families, especially siblings.

As Manfred returns to his family home, now he is much older, he has certain family issues to settle, especially that with his brother. We learn about sibling rivalries and can imagine the emotion which Manfred is going through as he returns to his home.

Full of emotion and beautifully written, this is a lovely novella full of feeling.

A grown man returning to his family home and place of origin: a story that has been done many times before, But this is no wallowing in nostalgia, nor a dark thriller. Instead, it is a gradual peeling back of layers to show all the complexities of family life, sibling rivalry, parental negligence.
A book full of wistfulness and yearning, for what might have been, for the people we did not marry and, above all, the people we did not become.

I was not expecting to have such a short story to read. However reading it at the same time of year in which the story was set helped to create a wonderful atmosphere.
It was an interesting story mentioning church, , rivers and hills. The atmosphere in the house for the. Christmas period, when his mother used to insist on herbs being burnt in the house to fend off evil spirits was very interesting. You could almost smell them.
The rift in the family between brothers was very sad.
I have to say that I did find the story very sad, but beautifully written.

An unexpected delight to end 2020 amid fireworks and celebrations.
A perfect novella to read between Christmas and New Year. With less words than a novel it is a pleasure to find an author who takes great care in the language and tone chosen.
Set within the farming hills of Germany’s Black Forest studded with the atmosphere and memories of winter. Steeped in the topography, customs and traditions in these communities.

It is an old fashioned tale of sibling rivalry; the struggle to take over the family business and step into one’s inheritance. Of accepted values and the love of a good woman.
Something went dramatically wrong and it ruptured the family and seemingly cursed one son’s future while the other left in disgrace, never to return home until the start of this story.

I enjoyed the descriptions, the bleak winter scenes and the harsh weather. I loved that the tale is rooted in this period of keeping evil spirits at bay, warding off those elements that would bring harm and destruction rather than the blessings through New Year and Epiphany.
The purpose of this return home is a hope of reconciliation. It has echos in local folklore, lost and blighted lives and the church seemingly struggling to extend its message of peace and hope.
There is a great sense of rejection building, that circumstances will ensure the brothers fail to meet, and that any attempt at reconciliation would not be well received. One brother has travelled miles to an inn where he can see his brother’s home. The distance between each other has been narrowed but a gulf remains.

An evocative and emotional piece of writing; which although slowly unpicks events from the past remains from one perspective alone. It is so hard in family disputes to take sides or appropriate guilt and this story shows steps towards remorse but not full redemption it seems.
However at the start of the piece the dominant tone and colour is grey while towards the end it is white. Perhaps this reflects a move towards forgiveness and although this was a tough journey to undertake it is now going along the final path to restoration and completeness.

Manfred has returned to the village he grew up in forty years ago. He has been living abroad and not been in contact with anyone since he left after an argument with his family. Manfred lost his home, his inheritance and the woman he loved to his brother Sebastian but now he wants to put things right. As winter closes in on the valley, Manfred muses on the events of long ago.
This is a very short novella or a long short story! However it is also beautiful. The descriptions of the valley in winter are entrancing and the vignettes from youth are captivating. Even though there is no explanation for the reasoning behind the choice that the parents made, Manfred's anger and frustration are weel-depicted and there is pathos in the memories of his lost love. This is a delight.

I would like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for trusting me with an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I really did not like this book at all. I was looking forward to it as it has good reviews but I just didn't get it. I know at its heart it is a story about reconnecting two brothers after many many years but I didn't like the way it has been written. There is a possibility, however, that it got lost in translation to English.

A short (shorter than expected) translated novella which makes the reader reflect about family and relationships over the festive period. Somewhat darker than I expected, it's not something I would choose to read in the build up to Christmas. However, I did appreciate how well it set the scene and the strong feelings it evoked in such little writing.

I did struggle at times to identify whether the narrator was in the past or the present as it's not always clear and can jump very quickly, and I would have liked some of the folklore elements to have been explained in a bit more detail, but the overall effect was still one that will stay with me for a while.

Homecoming
Snowfall, denser and denser,
dove-coloured as yesterday,
snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping.

White, stacked into distance.
Above it, endless,
the sleigh track of the lost.

Below, hidden,
presses up
what so hurts the eyes,
hill upon hill,
invisible.

On each,
fetched home into its today,
and I slipped away into dumbness:
wooden, a post.

There: a feeling,
blown across by the ice wind
attaching its dove- its snow-
coloured cloth as a flag.
(Paul Celan)

It is quite fitting that the Swiss author Urs Faes chose a fragment of this haunting poem of Paul Celan as an epigraph. The poem’s title Homecoming would as well have made a suitable title for this slender novel which contains echoes of the parable of the prodigal son and Old Testament reminiscences of Jacob and Esau and the expulsion from the garden of Eden. Even the bleak tones of Celan’s dove-coloured snow are in tune with Faes’s writing.

Implying lengthy or extensive family visits for many, the time around Christmas seems particularly predisposed to mull over the weight and state of affairs of family relationships in one’s life and the twisted emotions that might be connected to them. Not for everyone this is a time of blissful family harmony, long-lasting, unsettled scores or pain can smother beneath and what might seem a simple festive family ritual can be so confrontational and sharpen existent tensions that some might even consider cutting off contact radically in the future. One sees newspapers write on 'how to survive your family' or bringing testimonies of adult children on ‘divorcing’ their parent(s) and family. By situating his tale in that loaded period, Urs Faes takes the reader straight to the core of thorny family issues: can one, in truth, distance oneself lastingly from one’s family?

Set in a remote village in the Black Forest during the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany, the story on a feud between two brothers unfurls, told from the perspective of the oldest brother, Manfred, who returns to the village of his youth after forty years of absence. Wandering through the wintry landscape recognising places, hills, trees which were significant to him in the past, memories surge up, on his father, his mother burning herbs to prevent misfortune befalling on her and or her family during this Dodecameron period ('She let the smoke drift through the house: slightly sweet, spicily pungent, a hint of thyme, of heather and valerian, aroma's of apple blossom and resin. She would put juniper berries in the incense burner, adding fir and spruce needles, an activity that seemed to calm her, as though it gave her stability and certainty. No misfortune could strike her then, neither her or her family.'), of farm life, of his brother Sebastian, of his love for Minna, and the events which made Manfred leave for good. Ruminating on his revengeful deeds, his wrath, the loss and death of Minna, his remorse, the well-paced narrative gradually reveals why Manfred came back.

Urs Faes’s prose is spare, thoughtful and precise and evokes a world in which nature is animated and the landscape is experienced in an almost premodern way, echoing a kind of rural society where what is meaningful in life is connected to that landscape, where families lived for generations, and which is populated by the living, the dead and nonhuman beings.

A subtle, wonderfully atmospheric wintry tale on the human need for a sense of belonging, the (im)possibility of reconciliation, forgiveness, the meaning of family, the power of love and memory.

An atmospheric read as Manfred returns to the valley he grew up in during the Twelve nights leading up to Epiphany. Continuous snow fall, tales of folklore and local traditions frame this tragic story of events 40 years ago, and we learn why it has taken him a lifetime to return to see his brother Sebastian.

A wonderful novella, so right for this time of year. The book is set in the Black Forest. Manfred after being estranged from his family for forty years, returns home. Manfred had felt betrayed by the family as a youth and the story takes you back to those early years but there is also some folklore and legend that moves the story on to the present. I was disappointed that this was only a novella because I had enjoyed it so much. To me it was written so I could also work out and think things through whilst at the same time reading and enjoying, not every book does this. Really there was only one main character Manfred who is hoping to see his brother. How I would like to hear more.

A good wintery read but nothing all that memorable for me. I had hoped for more lyrical writing, and didn't find the plot particularly compelling. I did enjoy the setting and the folklore elements however.

Beginning just before Christmas, Urs Faes’ Twelve Nights tells the story of Manfred, home after forty years, hoping to make peace with his estranged younger brother. It’s the first time he’s returned to the valley he roamed with his beloved Minna and Sebastian as children, despite the deaths of both parents and of Minna herself. Eager for news of his brother but wary of making the first move, Manfred chats to the landlord learning that Sebastian is now a virtual recluse. At just over ninety pages, this tale of fraternal feud is more of a short story than a novella but it’s an atmospheric read, full of descriptions of the snow German landscape, with a pleasing resolution.

This is a translated novella set in the wintry festive season in the Black Forest by Swiss author, Urs Faes. It marks the return of Manfred to his home after 40 years in exile, estranged from his family, specifically his younger brother, Sebastian, after his parents left Hullert farm to him, despite him being ill suited to being a farmer, and the love of his life, Minna, went on to marry Sebastian instead. At the time, Manfred had felt betrayed, until then he had a close relationship with Sebastian, but filled with blind rage, had gone on to commit an unforgivable revenge and cursed his brother. The past hangs heavy over a haunted Manfred as he seeks a reconciliation with Sebastian, the snowy mountains, forests and valleys inextricably tied to his memories of his family, of his love and tender feelings for Minna that had never gone away, this ancestral place is where he belongs, this is home, and he has no intention of visiting Minna's grave.

This is the magical period of the Twelve Nights in which folklore and legend have it ghosts begin to stir, with the propensity to wreak havoc, a time when his mother told ghost stories whilst carrying out rituals with a solemnity and devotion that he has not forgotten. Then there is the tale of Lene and Hans, that Minna had related, telling of their doomed love. Will Manfred find himself reconciled with Sebastian? This is a beautifully written story, dripping with atmosphere, with a sense of melancholy that runs throughout the narrative, a location that holds centre stage, and a perfect read for this time of the year. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

As the elder of two brothers, Manfred expects to inherit his family’s farmstead in the Black Forest and dreams of settling down with his childhood sweetheart Minna. Instead, the Hullert farm goes to his brother Sebastian, and following a cruel and bitter falling-out between the siblings, Minna takes Sebastian’s side. Crushed, Manfred decides to emigrate, leaving his past behind him. Four decades later, during the magical Raunächte – or Twelve Nights – which give the novella its title, Sebastian returns to the village of his youth to seek reconciliation with Manfred.

As far as “plot” is concerned, there’s not much to Urs Faes’ slim novella beyond the bare bones reproduced above. However, Twelve Nights acquires a resonance well beyond the number of its pages, by tapping into folklore, myth and Biblical imagery. The rivalry between the siblings and the theme of the “stolen birthright” has echoes of the stories of Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, the parable of the Prodigal Son. In the inn where Sebastian is staying, the men of the village congregate around the fire, telling tales of “ghosts stirring in the ravine”. Sebastian recalls his mother burning herbs to keep “dark forces” at bay. The evil spirits which roam in the days between Christmas and Epiphany threatening “disorder and peril…abysses gaping open” turn into a metaphor for the pain which humans can inflict on each other. It seems that everywhere Sebastian looks shimmers with a magical sheen imparted by legend:

"Outside, through the window, the snow was falling once more, in dense flakes on this early evening; a creeping dusk blurred the contours, turning the trees into wizened forms, the stream to a taffeta-grey ribbon, the farmhouses to shadowy distorting mirrors. The street could no longer be seen in the leaden gloom, which was tinged blue towards the forest, black down the ravine. Childhoodland, filled with scents and stories, legends like that of the forest spirit Holländer Michel, figures looming out of the darkness of the trees, the meadows and marshlands, shallow waters and moon-pale quarry ponds…"

This is a deeply atmospheric read: eerie with almost Gothic overtones, and yet warm with hope. Jamie Lee Searle’s translation from the German is poetic and evocative of the natural winter wonderland which serves as a backdrop to this fable-like tale.

Faes' tale is intimate and atmospheric and delves into the themes of belonging, of forgiveness, of memory.

You should put on an extra jumper and pull a blanket over your knees before reading this novella about the Black Forest. In the deepest winter, the bleak twelve days around New Year, when the sprits roam,
Manfred has returned to his mountain village after 40 years of absence. He has come to make peace with his brother Sebastian after they’d fallen out over Minna all those years ago.
Powerful poetic description of the land, the superstition, the country folk, the malevolent spirits:
“They’re on the move, Holda and Perchta, with their hordes, shaking out their sacks, coming down from Nordrach, from the Grafenberg and the Taschenkopf, screaming and dancing.An unholy din, as you know, when Epiphany draws near and the Twelve Nights are at an end, when the evil spirits retreat and everything that was out of joint, the time and the world, falls into place.”

A perfect seasonal stocking filler!