Love in Case of Emergency - by Daniela Krien (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

"Fans of Sarah Dunn, Elisabeth Egan, and Isabel Gillies will relate to the multifaceted lives of Krien's characters, brilliantly rendered in her vivid voice." -- Booklist

Writing with the wry realism of Sally Rooney, one of Germany' most promising literary talents demonstrates her incisive understanding of the complexities of relationships and the depths of the human heart in this witty and compulsively readable novel about five very different women whose lives intersect.

What happens when women fulfill their roles as wives, mothers, friends, lovers, sisters, and daughters? What comes next? Award-winning author Daniela Krien explores these questions in this powerful novel of friendship, love, loss, and everything in between.

Krien explores the hopes, ambitions, challenges, and disappointments that shape modern women's lives, offering intimate insights on motherhood and childlessness, bereavement, infidelity, and divorce. At the heart of the novel are five very different women who find themselves hurtling towards a new way of living without knowing quite how they got there.

A fresh take on women's lives, Love in Case of Emergency is a punchy yet sensitive novel that takes the notion of aspiring to find happiness and connection to new and exhilarating heights.

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Review Quotes

"Fans of Sarah Dunn, Elisabeth Egan, and Isabel Gillies will relate to the multifaceted lives of Krien's characters, brilliantly rendered in her vivid voice." -- Booklist

"German novelist and award-winning short story author Krien (Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything) has produced a sensitive, intricate study of the connected stories of her characters, who seek a shield against the deep loneliness caused by unwanted solitude or by being with the wrong person. Readers will find something relatable in one or more of the lives of these women." -- Library Journal

"Witty and candid, Love in Case of Emergency deftly examines the world of relationships, and the challenges, ambitions and failures of the women who take part in them." -- Shelf Awareness

"[Love in Case of Emergency] is hopeful but never sentimental about how love might be parsed, and Krien is unfailingly impressive in her depiction of the lives of these five very different women." -- Irish Times

In spite of its serious subject, Love in Case of Emergency is a novel that will make your heart jump for joy.
-- Gérard Otremba, Sounds and Books

While reading the book the women become confidants and reveal themselves thereby remaining genuine, but most of all believable. Maybe that is the artistry, the literary concept of Daniela Krien, the familiar truthfulness of her characters, their touching intimacy.
-- Silke Müller, Stern, Hamburg

This is the one book that I would like to hand to everyone who wants to know something about contemporary German literature, the country and its people. -- Denis Scheck, WDR, Cologne

"This exquisite portrait of five middle-class women's lives is utterly captivating... A beautifully written masterclass in human frailty." -- Women and Home

"Krien's writing (translated excellently by Jamie Bulloch) is sparse and precise...there is [a] hopeful slant to the novel's concern with transition -- encapsulated by the migration of swifts through each chapter." -- Telegraph (UK)

"Written in unsentimental, affecting prose, this is an intelligent study of female desire, ambition, and frailty." -- The Observer (London)