It's tempting to summarize the plot of Peter Stamm's Seven Years (asI began to do when I first sat down to write this review) as a rathergrim exploration of a man's obsessive affair with a woman he findsdull and unattractive, but who nonetheless provides him with an escapefrom the unfulfillment he feels about his successful career andseemingly "perfect" marriage. And yet the more time I spent thinkingabout this novel--which definitely desires, even demands, that readersdo as much--the more I realized that if the protagonist, an architectnamed Alex, truly did not love his wife, Sonia, or find anyfulfillment in their life together, then his relationship with hislover Ivona, and thus the novel's plot, would be far simpler--and farless compelling. For despite the many complications involved inchanging one's life, for those of us lucky enough to live inrelatively safe and stable times and places, the remedies for many ofthe sources of our unhappiness are usually within reach: get adivorce; find a new career path; take a trip or go back to school orseek therapeutic help of some kind; maybe finally buy a dog. But partof the brilliance of Stamm's novel is his subtle exploration of a muchtrickier human conundrum: often, we can be fairly fulfilled, evenhappy, with our lives and yet still yearn for something more profound,something more meaningful. Even more confounding, sometimes we trulycan love someone and yet still be inexplicably drawn to something thatwe find (or don't find, and continue to seek) in someone else. Thus,as with Stamm's narrator Alex, the compulsions that can call us towardthe rocks don't necessarily drown out our happiness so much as talkover and around and through it; they don't replace the existingconversation so much as add a strange, thrilling new vocabulary oftheir own.To be sure, both Alex's marriage and career are built uponpracticality rather than passion, and he views his life as a "project"to be calculated like a balance sheet of gains and losses. On theother hand, Alex's relationship with his lover Ivona, despite theintense sexual attraction that crops up again and again to possess andobsess him, is most often characterized by debasement, disgust, andneglect. At best, he manages indifference or a basic concern for herwelfare, and one can't help but cringe at the mutually sadomasochisticdynamic that seems to compel and propel these two together. In fact,there is much to be made uncomfortable by in this novel, and yet it'san astonishing accomplishment on Stamm's part that despite themselves,the main characters (and even many of the minor ones) not only drew meinto their hopes and dreams and flaws and failures, but made me careabout them, too--a lot like real life, come to think of it.When Alex's carefully built life structures eventually come crashingdown one by one, he is left with nothing but the raw material ofhimself with which to rebuild. Stamm provides no answers as to howthat rebuilding will occur (or with whom), but I'd like to think thatat the end of the novel, as Alex gazes at the "inexplicably beautiful"(and notably empty) sky above him, he has finally begun to understandthat galvanizing German concept of Sehnsucht: the intense yearning forthat unnameable, ungraspable something, defined by C.S. Lewis as the"inconsolable longing" inherent in the human heart for "we know notwhat." I would also like to think that Alex can find a way to satisfysome of his more tangible desires without falling into the trap ofonly really wanting the things he doesn't have, until he has them.Even more important, perhaps beneath that empty sky, he can make peacewith those less tangible "inconsolable" longings that inevitably colorour souls with sadness and heartbreak and loss, but without whichleave a barren, monotonous palette indeed.