BOOK REVIEW: Mrs. Lowe-Porter by Jo Salas

Mrs. Lowe-Porter by Jo Salas  is a gorgeous, moving, and infuriating biographical novel, telling the story of Helen Lowe-Porter, the first English translator of Thomas Mann’s monumental works.

I’ve read Buddenbrooks and Joseph and His Brothers, and am awed. I also read Colm Toibin’s biographical novel of Mann, The Magician, which made me determined to read all of Toibin’s novels. So when I saw a review of Mrs. Lowe-Porter, it caught my attention. I’m so glad it did.

Helen Porter was a brilliant, ambitious, creative woman, who struggled against the obstacles women faced in her time (and still do today)—including the necessity of always taking a backseat to men. Despite her many talents, she fell into the trap of deferring to the men in her life and apologizing for the space she wanted to carve out for herself. Helen yearned to be a writer. She was warned by her maiden aunt that, to succeed, she’d have to forego marriage and all the distractions that drained away women’s focus and energy. And yet, she fell in love.

Elias Loew (later Lowe, to hide his Jewish ancestry) was a confident, charming, ambitious academician, a friend of her sister’s, living in Germany. When Helen came to Munich as a long-term tourist, Elias showed her around the city. They became friends. He treated her as one of the guys, until he seduced her. Apparently, he loved her, at least as well as an ego-centric, self-absorbed, condescending jerk could love. His needs, his career, everything about him, always came first. Also, as he explained to her after sleeping with her, sex was a life force. This force was stronger in men than in women. And in him, it was stronger than in other men. So he had to be unfaithful to her. And she had to be understanding.

Yech!

While Elias struggled to get his academic career off the ground, applying for grant after grant with no success, and with a baby on the way, Helen was fortunate enough to get work translating German writings into English. Her big break (or life-crushing event) was being asked by the Knopfs to translate Buddenbrooks.

For most of the rest of her life, she was Mann’s translator. And while she was pleased to do it, recognizing the author’s brilliance and feeling privileged to be trusted with his work, it was nevertheless a thankless job that sapped her creative energy. For all her devotion, meticulousness, and creativity in bringing Mann’s work to an English-speaking audience, she was dismissed as a mere clerk.

The novel is told through short chapters, each an episode in Helen’s life, generally in her viewpoint but sometimes in Elias’, or rarely in their daughter’s or granddaughter’s. The episodes are not strictly chronological. Chapters dated 1963, when Helen is in a nursing home/dementia unit, are interspersed with chapters taking us through her life. The “1963" chapters are particularly heartbreaking. This woman who gave herself so freely to two men, Elias and Thomas Mann, ended up with nothing for herself. 

This is a lyrical, literary novel that will give you a great appreciation for Helen Lowe-Porter, and an urge to track down one of Mann’s masterpieces translated by this remarkable woman.