Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: January 16, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 2340979
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If you knew that you could experience a significant love once in your life, would you want these years at the beginning or at the end?
The Vision of Emma Blau is the luminous epic of a bicultural family filled with passion and aspirations, tragedy and redemption. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Stefan Blau flees Burgdorf, a small town in Germany, and comes to America in search of the vision that has grafted itself to his mind so tenaciously that he's dreamed of it every night. The novel closes nearly a century later with Stefan's granddaughter, Emma, and the legacy of his dream, a once-grand apartment house filled with the hidden truths of its inhabitants both past and present.
Ursula Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the frailty of language and its transcendence, the love that bonds generations and the cultural wedges that drive them irrevocably apart.
Told with her celebrated prose and clear-eyed characterization, The Vision of Emma Blau is Ursula Hegi's most powerful and absorbing work.
Amazon.com Review:
Ursula Hegi's The Vision of Emma Blau is an epic story of German immigrants attempting to assimilate while still preserving traces of home in their language and rituals. In 1894 Stefan Blau leaves Europe for America; he is only 13 years old, but he feels the need for another country so strongly that it wakes him up at night. After narrowly escaping a restaurant fire in New York City, he finds himself in New Hampshire. With money he has saved from waiter jobs and poker winnings, he buys a small hotel, which under time he transforms into a six-story, elaborate apartment house. The Wasserburg (water fortress) is a palace towering over a half-empty lake town, standing out in the landscape the same way Stefan's accent stands out in conversation--exotic, awkward, a hybrid of German and American dreams.
Hegi's writing is lively and graceful, moving across time, space, and generations without faltering or bogging down. While her scope is vast, her great gift is for particulars: Stefan's third wife, Helene, who has a deep-seated aggression in her soul that her mother attributed to her being a 'biter' as a child; his daughter, Greta, who lags in school but notices things no one else does--'the reflection of the half moon that swayed on the water like a slab of frost,' or the music of her flute--'long notes that sounded like the calls of large birds flying through the night.' These moments of poetry open up The Vision of Emma Blau, halting its swirling world with their loveliness.
Hegi is best known for her 1994 novel, Stones from the River, which Oprah chose for her book group, catapulting this somewhat obscure writer onto the bestseller lists. But Hegi was around for a long time before Oprah shined the light on her. She is a born storyteller, a witness to the immigrant experience who is reimagining America's past from the perspective of those who desired that country as a promised land, but who even after 100 years could never quite sleep the sleep of its native sons. --Emily White
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Rated by buyers 
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Hegi's remarkable family saga is about nothing less than the American Dream, and in this novel that dream is represented by the Wasserburg, a "flamboyant" and "conspicuous," six-storied, 36-apartment building overshadowing a small New Hampshire town, "its reflection biting into the lake further than anything [the townspeople] had built." In spite of its out-of-place opulence, the building "elevated the town's reputation among neighboring communities," as well as the reputation of its owner and builder, Stefan Blau, for whom the Wasserburg stands as a symbol of his arrival, achievement, and acceptance in his new homeland.
As multilayered and extravagant as Hegi's novel, Stefan's dream-house has room for a colorful assortment of residents, and much of the novel's warmth, humor, and pathos come from their sideshow exploits. His children, however, occupy the center stage--and they are mostly a disappointment to him; none of them fulfill the "vision" he has for an heir to his estate, and they all bear the brunt of his unapproachable temper. "He was not well suited to be a father. And here he was with three children, but without the skill or habit of asking forgiveness." Secretive Tobias holds a longstanding, petulant grudge against his father, an inherited stubbornness instigated by a childhood prank, and he swears that he won't even attend Stefan's funeral. Robert has a secret of his own, an eating disorder that his girth can't hide. And, Greta, "the only child who'd made him feel a worthy father," inherits three million dollars from the mother of Stefan's second wife and ultimately lets him down by setting up an ascetic existence in the smallest apartment of the building, where she nurses a covert love for a priest from Boston.
It is Stefan's granddaughter, Emma, who finally finds a way to his love and who promises to be the fulfillment of his dream. Although their lives intersect for only a small portion of Emma's childhood, Stefan's love for the Wasserburg leaves an indestructible impression. But dreams and visions change with the times, and the building that was a luxurious testimonial to an immigrant's ambition and sucess early in the twentieth century has become a dated, run-down boondoggle by the end of it. It takes Emma far too long to learn what her grandfather never did: that friends and family, not buildings, are the stuff of dreams.
Rated by buyers -
With dreams of adventure and fortune in his mind's eye, 13-year-old Stefan Blau ran away from his German home, setting sail for a new life in America.
He arrived with nothing - but thanks to hard work and a bit of luck, Stefan became a successful New Hampshire restaurant owner before his twenties were through. Full of vision and confidence, Stefan dares to build the Wasserburg - German for "water fortress" - a large, modern waterfront apartment building unlike anything area residents have ever seen before.
Over the coming decades, the Wasserburg becomes the center of Stefan's - and many residents' -lives. There's old Miss Garland, a retired spinster who weaves stories about a tragically killed young fiance until she herself scarcely remembers the truth; and the Braddocks, with their young retarded daughter Fanny. Outrageous Pearl Bloom, who shocked the community by marrying her husband after a courtship of hours, forms a lifelong friendship with Helene, Stefan's quiet, German-born third wife, an awkward woman who never thought she'd marry. As the building expands, Stefan hires the Wilsons as live-in caretakers. With them comes their nephew Danny, who will one day be important to young Tobias Blau in a way few might imagine.
As the decades pass, readers experience the changing world through the eyes of the Blaus, their family and friends. In the beginning of the book, America is at the cusp of the 20th century, full of hope and exciting new inventions. Two world wars later - one of which causes incredible discomfort for the German-American Blaus among their neighbors - it's evident how much the Blaus and the world have changed, and not necessarily for the better.
Hegi's book, Stones by the River, ties in nicely with this book, and characters and scenes overlap in each, especially during the World War II years.
Since I very first read this book several years ago, I have reread it at least a half dozen times. With every reading, I continue to notice new details and levels of meaning that escaped me before. Hegi's characters and the world they inhabit are just as intense and realistic as any you could hope to meet in person.
Rated by buyers 
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Was this book about anything? If so, I missed it. I only saw an endeavor at a counterpart to "Stones" that didn't come off.
Instead I feel battered by the message of, "Gosh, it's hard being German," which worked in the earlier book and fell flat in this one. Hard being German in this country in WWII? Maybe. But not as hard as it was, say in WWI. Not as hard as it was being German in Germany in WWII. Or as hard as being Jewish in either country. Or black.
It's not just an annoying message; it's unbearably trite, and I finished the book because I couldn't believe it wouldn't get better, while promising myself I never had to read another one.
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I listened to this book on tapes. Beautifully written and read by the author.
Rated by buyers -
She is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. This book is filled with so many emotions and events my mind is still going over everything. Def a book that stays with you for awhile. I wanted to comfort the characters and felt as if I was myself living at the Wasserburg. I do agree that the characters had a sad tone to them, but none the less, made for a book I couldn't put down!
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