‘Working on these lectures was not easy.
On the way from their beginning to an end, private subject matter surfaced unexpectedly in my writing;
we shall see whether I’ll come to regret it.’
– Judith Hermann, We’d Have Told Each Other Everything
[ About We’d Have Told Each Other Everything ]
On a dark night in Berlin’s Kastanienallee, acclaimed writer Judith Hermann runs into her psychoanalyst — a chance encounter that begins an exploration of the fluid boundaries between truth and invention, memoir and fiction. Through three interconnected essays — in prose, precise yet dreamlike — Judith Hermann captures those moments when reality shifts: a friendship that unravels, salt-bright summers on the North Sea, an unconventional childhood, and the weight of familial trauma. Part literary meditation, part memoir, part novel, this work explores the delicate art of transforming life into literature, challenging our deepest and sometimes darkest assumptions about memory, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves.
This remarkable work of autofiction offers a magical exploration of memory and truth-telling. Through intimate details from the writer’s life, it reveals how writing transforms both what we remember and what we allow ourselves to forget.
[ My Review ]
We’d Have Told Each Other Everything by Judith Hermann published recently with Mercier Press. Translated by Katy Derbyshire it was the Winner of the Wilhelm Raabe Prize in 2023. Not being familiar with the writing of Judith Hermann I was intrigued to delve into her work via her latest publication which consists of three interconnecting essays. Described as autofiction, these self-analysing stories were originally commissioned for the Frankfurt University’s Lectures on Poetics series.
The first essay relates to an accidental encounter, late one evening, when Judith crosses paths with her psychoanalyst Dr Dreehüs. She had terminated her sessions with him two years previously and this is the first time she has ever met him beyond the confines of his therapy rooms – ‘many times in my lilfe, I have not recognized people when I’ve met them outside of their usual settings. I had never faced Dr Dreehüs outside his office; nor strictly speaking inside his office.’
After a brief salute she watches him go into a late night bar and decides to follow him, unsure of what will transpire, but also curious about the stance of their relationship. They have a few drinks and she thinks about how their paths initially crossed, remembering her old friends Marco and Ada. Marco has since passed and her relationship with Ada just quietly stopped. She reflects on her earlier therapy sessions and on her life during those days. She describes Ada as ‘the uncrowned queen of a far-reaching urban tribe’ and Marco, Ada’s childhood friend, as an individual with ‘various artistic ambitions’. His death had an impact on her and his ‘laying out balanced things’ resulting in her subsequently ended her sessions with Dr Dreehüs. Ada and Marco are central to this essay examining the impact they both had on her life and the resulting choices she made. Following her interaction with Dr Dreehüs, she discovered that it had ‘shifted something, brought it to an end and a new beginning’ and she makes a decision.
The second essay is very much about her family and how those early years affected her in later life. Her father was frequently in a depressive state and, with her mother out working, Judith spent many an hour with her grandmother, who also had spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals – ‘happiness, a simple, harmonious form of being together, a family outing, a contented supper, was inconceivable.’ Her grandmother’s mother tongue was Russian ‘and sometimes wore a silver broach modelled on a troika’. Judith was reared listening to ‘stories that were repeated mantra-like’ but it was ‘the silent mantras’ which were ‘far louder, almost droning. War years, post-war years, questions of guilt and remorse, dark mechanics, patchwork of allusion, abyss, horror’. Remembering back over this time is a cathartic, almost self-cleansing, exercise with Hermann recounting memories, thoughts and blurred reflections of her family life and relationships.
The third essay mentions the recent Covid pandemic that sent the world into freefall. Hermann is clearly more at peace with herself and spends the down time writing and contemplating her life. Now divorced, she is in a new relationship with a photographer and living near the sea. She starts to open up, to share her thoughts and dreams, realising that ‘with age, writing shifts away from a centre once thought secure, from a serenity once taken for granted. It shifts away from thoughtlessness. It becomes sharper, and yet less. Perhaps it ebbs away. Or it returns to that centre and tries again, tries again from the beginning.’
We’d Have Told Each Other Everything is a very introspective collection with a dream-like quality filtering through the words. It is a self-analysing memoir, a work that blurs the lines between reality and fiction with Hermann questioning her own memory at certain times. It’s a very vulnerable read with a raw honesty flowing through the chapters, depicting all the flaws and fractures of Hermann’s past and present. A courageous collection, We’d Have Told Each Other Everything is a very personal exposé, a melancholy and dignified piece of writing.
[ Thank you to Mercier Press for a copy of We’d Have Told Each Other Everything in exchange for my honest review ]
[ Bio ]
Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. Her debut Summer House, Later (1998) was extraordinarily well received. She followed up in 2003 with the short stories Nothing But Ghosts, some of which were dramatised for cinema in 2007. Her internationally celebrated collection Alice came out in 2009. Judith Hermann published her first novel, Where Love Begins, in 2014, followed by Letti Park in 2016, which was awarded the Danish Blixen Prize for short stories. Her 2021 novel Daheim was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Judith Hermann has won numerous awards for her work, including the Kleist Prize and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. Her most recent book, We’d Have Told Each Other Everything, was awarded the Wilhelm Raabe Prize in 2023. She lives and writes in Berlin.
Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German writers, including Olga Grjasnowa, Inka Parei and twice-Booker-nominated Clemens Meyer. She lives in Berlin, where she heads the V&Q Books publishing imprint and co-hosts a monthly translation lab. She is co-founder of the live show and podcast Dead Ladies Show.
