It's already a best-seller, translated in ten languages, 200,000 copies sold in Germany alone, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature, and more than 30 weeks in Der Spiegel's best-seller list. I don't need to add much to that. The original German title is "
Vom Ende der Einsamkeit", and the author's name may sound English, but it is a nom-de-plume. The "Wells" is taken from the character of the orphan Homer Wells in John Irving's "The Cider House Rules". Benedict Wells was himself sent to boarding school when he was six years old, and spent his entire youth away from home, even though his parents were alive. Not so in this novel, where three children, two boys and a girl, are sent to boarding school after their parents died in a car crash. They have to find their way in school, and later in life. Even if all three lives bifurcate in different directions, at crucial points in life they meet again and help each other if needed. The narrator, the youngest of the three, recounts his story when meeting Alva again, a girl he was once in love with. The renew their friendship when adults.
The novel is of course partly based on true emotions and experiences: the loneliness of a child, the urge of the children to each get accepted as full individuals with their special character traits and personalities in the often hostile world of children and the ununderstanding world of adults. Even later in life, this craving to be loved remains one of the main driving forces of the narrator, as well as his biggest frustration.
It is sentimental. It is very emotional ... but to Wells's credit, he tries to stay on the right side of good taste, he does not overdo it.
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