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The End of Loneliness

Published by Diogenes as Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

Original Title: Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

»A difficult childhood is like an invisible enemy: you never know when it will come for you.«

Jules and his brother and sister Marty and Liz are all very different, but a tragic event marks all their lives. Having grown up in idyllic circumstances, they lose their parents in an accident. Although they are all sent to the same boarding school, each of them goes their own way, becoming strangers to one another and losing contact. Jules in particular, once a paragon of confidence, withdraws more and more into a dream world. The only friendship he makes is with the mysterious Alva, but he will only realize what she means to him years later – and what she has never told him. When Jules meets Alva again as an adult, it looks like they could make up for lost time. But then the past catches up with them.

Featured title in New Books in German

General Fiction
368 pages
2016

978-3-257-06958-7

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»Benedict Wells has dared to tackle a great dramatic subject – and he has mastered it. The narrative tone is quiet, melancholy at times. The tragic never gets loud with Benedict Wells. The images are strong, the characterizations concise.«

Dieter Langhart / St. Galler Tagblatt

»This new novel is his masterpiece.«

Claudio Armbruster / ZDF, Mayence

»The novel develops an undertow like good crime writing, wise and full of empathy with its characters. At just over thirty, Benedict Wells writes like an old master.«

Martin Wolf / Literaturspiegel, Hamburg

»A book like a movie, full of life, hope, despair, laughter, tears. […] This novel is a quiet pleasure. Full of emotion, but not overloaded, full of joy but never loud. Sad, yet with a silver lining on the horizon.«

Christine Westermann / WDR, Cologne

»Benedict Wells has written a beautiful love story, that is equally touching and amusing, that makes you sad and happy. It is a family story in a coming-of-age style novel.«

Frauke Kaberka / dpa, Berlin

»Extremely touching.«

Gong, Ismaning

»An excellent, gripping novel for readers young and old.«

Elke Heidenreich / WDR, Cologne

»With his book On the End of Loneliness he presents a linguistic masterpiece. He achieves a gripping family novel, a sensitive love story, a clever book about friendship. Well-constructed and tantalizingly narrated.«

Daniela Hungbaur / Augsburger Allgemeine

»Touchingly narrated, linguistically excellent […] A novel not easily forgotten.«

Ravensburger Verlag Foundation

»Whether he reaches his dead father at the time, is a question that you are still wondering about after the close of the novel.«

Michel Krielaars / NRC Handelsblad , Amsterdam

»The writing is as luminous as the subject is dark. The reader cannot but continue to read this intelligent, sensitive and moving tale.«

Elisabeth Clauss / Elle, Paris

»A beautiful melancholic book.«

Linda, Amsterdam

»A grand novel that affects the reader deeply. This intense sensitive story leaves you breathless and slightly sad.«

Margriet de Groot / Zin, Amsterdam

»Our fate is everything we become; yet what happens to Jules and Alva, in the hands of Benedict Wells, is dazzling storytelling. The End of Loneliness is both affecting and accomplished – and eternal.«

John Irving / (author of The World According to Garp)

»With a surprising maturity [. . .] Benedict Wells has found a voice to describe, neither cruelly nor over-sensitively, human fragility, failure and ageing.«

Nicolas Weill / Le Monde, Paris

»An undisputed literary masterpiece – reminds me of Jonathan Franzen. [. . .] Benedict Wells manages to inspire grand themes, in a very personal way, directed straight at the reader. His novel about three members of the same family strikes home.«

Jeroen Vullings / Vrij Nederland, Amsterdam

»Touching and timeless.«

Publishers Weekly, New York

»A love story and a life story, this rich and well-translated domestic drama acknowledges that some bonds are truly immutable in the face of, or perhaps because of, tragedy and that our memories and the stories we make of them, though they may change, are as real as anything.«

Annie Bostrom / Booklist (starred review)

»A bittersweet, intricately plotted family saga [...] A tender, affecting novel, one that packs a lot into a slender frame.«

Kirkus Reviews, New York

»A tear-jerker [...] it is impossible to look away from it.«

Paula Cocozza / The Guardian, London

»Reconciling loss and finding a way to hope again is at the heart of Benedict Wells' The End of Loneliness, a moving story [...]«

Caroline Rogers / Southern Living (The Best New Books Coming Out)

»This beautiful book [. . .] brings German author Benedict Wells, only 35, front and center among world writers.«

John Timpane / The Philadelphia Inquirer

»I didn’t want this book to end.«

Claudia Roth / freundin, Munich