review
Anne Sauer’s debut novel ‘The Other Life’ offers a timely and thought-provoking exploration of womanhood, motherhood, and the road not taken. Blending domestic realism with speculative fiction, Sauer employs a compelling ‘sliding doors’ premise to follow one woman as she lives two parallel versions of her life: one as a child-free urbanite struggling with infertility, and the other as a new mother in her childhood village, unexpectedly thrust into the demands of postpartum life.
Toni, who lives in the city with her partner Jakob, has spent years ambivalent about motherhood. After a long period of trying and failing to conceive, including a miscarriage and emotionally gruelling fertility treatments, she begins to wonder if she truly wants children. But one morning, she wakes up as Antonia: a version of herself living in the hometown of her childhood, married to her former boyfriend Adam, and mother to a newborn daughter. In this alternate reality, Antonia is consumed by the rawness and disorientation of new motherhood: sleepless nights, aching isolation, and the erasure of her former identity.
The novel alternates between Toni and Antonia’s perspectives, offering readers a rich contrast between two equally complicated but believable female experiences. Antonia’s exhaustion and panic in early motherhood – highlighted in scenes such as her attendance of a chaotic support group for new mums – is rendered with painful honesty, while Toni’s emotional fatigue from fertility treatments and increasing alienation from her partner and friends is equally affecting.
Sauer does not romanticise either life path. Instead, ‘The Other Life’ gently but firmly interrogates cultural expectations around womanhood, choice, and fulfilment. Ultimately, Toni finds peace in accepting a child-free future, at the cost of her relationship, while Antonia slowly bonds with her baby and begins to see beauty in her new life, even as she continues to long for parts of her former self.
Stylistically, the novel is accessible and straightforward, an engaging and relatable read. Its strength lies in the questions it raises about identity and agency, and the pressures on women to make the ‘right’ life choices.
‘The Other Life’ is a smart, culturally relevant novel that captures the complexities of modern womanhood and will appeal to English-language readers navigating all kinds of life questions
Find out more: https://www.dtv.de/buch/im-leben-nebenan-28483
All recommendations from Autumn 2025