Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stiftertrans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne MooreNew York Review Books, 2008 (originally Pantheon, 1945)

I thought I was in the mood for a wintry book, for prose with edges like mountains and ice, but maybe I wasn’t, or maybe I was but this wasn’t it. Having read W.H. Auden’s introduction, I knew the ending already, so I missed out on the “almost unendurable suspense” the back cover copy promises. But knowing the ending isn’t the problem, and neither is the simplicity of the prose: some of it’s quite beautiful. Maybe it’s just reading this after Dylan Thomas, who’s so exuberant and who captures people so well, people as well as places, whereas this novella is more like a folk tale, more about the general than the specific, which can sometimes mean characters who aren’t nearly so rich. It’s the story of Conrad and Sanna, a brother and sister who have often walked the mountain pass between their village and the village where their grandparents live. But one Christmas Eve, as they walk home in a snowstorm, they lose their way and spend a night on a mountain glacier, high above their valley home. The descriptions of the mountain and the stars, the snow and the Milky Way and the ice fields, are more vivid than the people, especially the children — Sanna says hardly anything more than “Yes, Conrad” throughout the entire story.