Book Review: "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch

“Homo Faber” is one of those books that without it being a little bit cheaply sold on Amazon, I would not have bought because it is totally not my thing at all. However, I loved the book - I really enjoyed myself and I actually read the whole thing in one night from about ten until midnight. I just could not put it down because the main character, Walter Faber, was a brilliantly flawed human being. He seems like this guy that believes he has so many problems that nobody could possibly understand him and yet, he is plagued by the existence of this German guy who will not leave him alone. He seems like he is just annoyed by people existing at this point because he has practically given up on everyone. He keeps thinking about a woman called Ivy, but because he is not with her, he feels a little depressed and uncomfortable.

This is a book in which very little physically happens and there is a lot of description, there is a lot of self-discovery and there is definitely a lot of introspection. This means that it is definitely my type of book. But there is also a lot of animosity from the main character, there is a lot of complaining and a lot of entitled-ness from the main character - which means I felt I would get angry with this book and it probably was not my thing. However, I still really enjoyed it and I think it was because of the way it was written. When the plane goes a bit off the damn wall, the main character is not even frightened for his death, instead he contemplates the way in which nobody is panicking at all because the pilot has already said that everything is fine. This reminds me of the hospital scene from “The Dark Knight” in which if it is part of the plan, nobody panics at all. It is a brilliant feature of the book because it is deeply philosophical and psychological.

This is a really sad quotation right here:

“Being alone is the only possible condition for me, since I don't want to make a woman unhappy, and women have a tendency to become unhappy. Being alone isn't always fun, you can't always be in form. Moreover, I have learned from experience that once you are not in form women don't remain in form either; as soon as they are bored they start complaining you've no feeling…”

I can honestly say that this quotation really hit me hard because I can definitely relate to this. When Mr. Walter Faber is playing chess with the man from Germany, he discovers that one man that he knew years ago is this German guy’s brother and thus, they have an indirect connection. It is from here that he seems to settle down with the German guy mostly because of this and because he has no other choice. It is a brilliant psychological scene.

Then there is this extract which will really mess with your head:

“I don’t deny that it was more than a coincidence which made things turn out as they did, it was a whole train of coincidences. But what has providence to do with it? I don’t need any mystical explanation for the occurrence of the improbable; mathematics explains it adequately, as far as I’m concerned. Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.”

When I read the word ‘mathematically’ I almost cried, I knew I was not going to understand this part. But, instead it was about how the character thinks and how they are not impressed by absolutely anything at all.

All in all, it is a book that I think that everyone should read in their lifetime, it is a brilliantly written existential crisis of a man basically unimpressed with everything and a man who has given up on everything. Throughout the book, he attempts to find peace with this and discover his true self.