The Sorrows of Young WertherMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

Before finishing this book, I was thinking I was not going to rate it too high. As Werther’s unrequited love drove him to emotional, and then physical, extremes, I simply couldn’t find him sympathetic. He was intelligent and well off, but his self-centered desire diminished him for me. But, I read quickly to the end and really enjoyed this short novel. I realized that the beauty of the book was its story, so well told by a then 24-year-old Goethe. Even though I didn’t always like the titular character as a person, I wanted to know what he thought and how his story unfolded.

I must say I’m also a sucker for epistolary novels. I like seeing only through the words of the letter writer(s). It’s like listening in on a conversation, but only hearing one side of it. There’s so much you think about, like what the recipient thinks when reading it, as well as what was going on in the letter writer’s mind vs. what they actually put on paper. And, to be honest, there’s also the titillating feature of reading someone else’s private correspondence, as if sneaking a peak at a letter left on a table or discretely reading over someone’s shoulder.

The Sorrows of Young Werther is a book of moods. It looks deeply at relationships and also at nature. It is a Romantic book, the first I’ve read that wasn’t originally written in English. I’m happy to have read it.