A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story

"The Sunday edition of the Kärntner Volkszeitung carried the following item under ‘Local News': ‘In the village of A. (G. township), a housewife, aged 51, committed suicide on Friday night by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.'"

So opens A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, the eminent Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke's reckoning with his mother's life—which spanned the rise of the Nazis, World War II, and postwar suffering—and death. Both stark and lyrical, full of lov…