A book that gets more, not less, mysterious as it goes. I am glad that such novels exist; they are the literary equivalent of a sudden plunge into icy waters. They shock, they clarify.
— Peter C. Baker, The New York Times
Never before in English, a gripping, razor-sharp novella of a fractured marriage, by the ferociously talented author of The Wall
Never before in English, Killing Stella is a gripping, razor-sharp novella about a fractured marriage by the ferociously talented author of The Wall.
Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children are visiting her in-laws, Annarecounts the addition of her friend’s daughter, Stella, into their already tense and tumultuous household. Staring out the window at her garden, Anna worries about the baby bird in the linden tree, about her husband, Richard (who flits from one adultery to another), about her son’s gloomy demeanor and her daughter’s obliviousness, and most of all, about Stella, a confused teenager who will meet a sudden and disastrous end.
A domestic horror story that blossoms into a catastrophe, Marlen Haushofer's Killing Stella distills many of the themes of Marlen Haushofer’s acclaimed novel The Wall into a claustrophobic, gothic, shattering novella.
A book that gets more, not less, mysterious as it goes. I am glad that such novels exist; they are the literary equivalent of a sudden plunge into icy waters. They shock, they clarify.
— Peter C. Baker, The New York Times
Sparse yet unsparing, [Killing Stella] is a riveting, merciless fable of blame, shame, and consequence—a total, self-encapsulating project.
— Elvia Wilk, 4columns
A blend of cool observation and terror.
— Nikianna Dinenis, European Review of Books
The late Haushofer (1920–1970) brilliantly transforms an inevitable fatal ending into an electrifying beginning. Originally published in 1958, precisely translated by Shaun Whiteside, Stella remains timelessly potent, its haunting horror more relevant than ever.
— Terry Hong, Booklist
This potent 1958 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer (The Wall) takes the form of a mother’s agitated confession. … Haushofer vividly evokes Anna’s shame, fear, numbness, regret, and anger, revealing the depths of claustrophobic unhappiness in her household. This one hits hard.
— Publishers Weekly
A slim domestic horror story that serves as a perfect entry to Haushofer’s work.
— Vulture
Killing Stella explores the everyday horror of the heterosexual family, its violence, and the perversion of its relationships.
— Asymptote
A window into the singularity of consciousness.
— Janique Vigier, Bookforum
Killing Stella is an accomplished work of real-life horror, the documentation of a woman whose choices have entombed her alive in a comfortable hell.
— B.D. McClay, Washington Post
The narration circles around itself, sidling up to startling revelations about illicit desires and discontents, confessing in fits and starts.
— Tia Glista, Cleveland Review of Books
Haushofer stands alongside writers like Elfriede Jelinek and Ingeborg Bachmann... Reading Killing Stella feels like breathing down the necks of the cracked women-shaped icons that haunt Klaus Theweleit’s “Male Fantasies” or longing pain of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” (1962). You can feel the “boot in the face,” the “brute heart,” that lies at the story’s center.
