The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells Pub. 2018 463 pgs.
The End of Loneliness is an unusual novel. Published originally in German, and taking place mostly in Germany, it is written in the first person by a young man, Jules, who is looking back to his childhood, and later back to his earlier adulthood. In both cases, he has experienced traumatic loss which the reader learns about only later. As the story opens, he is lying in a hospital bed after a serious motorcycle accident, expecting to die but surviving.
When we next meet Jules, he is remembering his boarding school years: not terrible years but also not easy ones. He has lost contact with his brother and sister. His best friend is Alva, a girl from school with whom he has been close, in a totally platonic way; she has become his family. They part ways suddenly and dramatically because neither can be perfectly open with the other. Jules never forgets the warmth of their relationship, and always longs to find her again. Finally, after 15 years, he does find her and they resume their platonic friendship because she is now married to an older man, a successful writer, who is suffering from the early phase of dementia.
Jules is also an aspiring writer. The couple invite him to join them in Switzerland for a prolonged stay, with the idea that he can pursue his writing in the isolation and relative peace of the Swiss mountains. He remains at their request, working alongside the husband as both men struggle to complete work in which they are deeply invested. The relationship among the three becomes more complicated with every passing day, particularly since the husband continues to decline and is fully aware of his loss and of the future that lies ahead for him.
Ultimately Jules marries Alva, but not without having made a deal to finish her husband’s last collection of short stories and prepare it for publication, and not without guilt over how the marriage ended. After yet another catastrophe in his life, he is faced with a decision about whether to go or to give up. Throughout the novel there are periods of happiness and confidence in his life, and periods of utter loss, bleak black times of the soul. As the title implies. he finally does resolve the issues troubling him and turns his energy to rebuilding a life for himself and his children, but the struggle is arduous. In a sense it represents all of our lives, with the ups and downs that living presents to each of us; no relationship is consistently blessed. This is the story of Everyman (and of Everywoman).