Description

“Highly recommended” Sunday Times

“Utterly captivating” Woman and Home

“Sympathetic and clear-eyed” Financial Times Summer Reads of 2021

“Unfailingly impressive” Irish Times

“Sparse and precise” Telegraph

“Beautifully direct and lucid prose . . . fierce intelligence” Melbourne Age & Sydney Morning Herald

“A beautiful novel of what it is to be a women in modern Europe” New European

“An intelligent study of female desire, ambition and frailty” Observer

Bookseller Paula has lost a child, and a husband. Where will she find her happiness? Fiercely independent Judith thinks more of horses than men, but that doesn’t stop her looking for love online. Brida is a writer with no time to write, until she faces a choice between her work and her family. Abandoned by the “perfect” man, Malika struggles for recognition from her parents. Her sister Jorinde, an actor, is pregnant for a third time, but how can she provide for her family alone?

Love in Five Acts explores what is left to five women when they have fulfilled their roles as wives, mothers, friends, lovers, sisters and daughters. As teenagers they experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, but freedom brings with it another form of pressure: the pressure of choice.

Punchy and entirely of the moment, Love in Five Acts engages head-on with what it is to be a woman in the twenty-first century.

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Publisher Review

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 * This exquisite portrait of five middle-class women's lives is utterly captivating . . . A beautifully written masterclass in human frailty. * Woman and Home * Few intelligently entertaining German novels don't ooze relevance yet are not afraid of existential seriousness. Fortunately, Krien has written one -- Rainer Moritz * Neue Zurcher Zeitung * Daniela Krien is an impressive storyteller for emergency case called love, which silences many of us. Daniela Krien gives them a strong voice -- Harald Butz * Hamburger Morgenpost * Krien expertly connects fortunes that only seem simple at first glance to create an altogether excellent book -- Melke Schnitzler * Brigitte * She is a good listener, [...] Maybe this is why her novel Love in Five Acts is so entertaining * Sueddeutsche Zeitung * With psychological refinement Daniela Krien recounts the chaos of feelings and the short half-life of modern ways of living * Vogue (Germany) * Maybe that is the artistry, the literary concept of Daniela Krien, the familiar truthfulness of her characters, their touching intimacy -- Silker Mueller * Stern * The polyphony and the way in which every single voice is being led midway between the protagonist and the narrator constitute the special quality of this book -- Burkhard Muller * Suddeutsche Zeitung * Nothing in this life is for free. And this is why this book entertains and is food for thought, with remarkable women in their thirties and forties -- Cornelia Geissler * Berliner Zeitung * It's the book of the summer -- Stefan Kister * Stuttgarter Zeitung *