Strauss, if he would treat himself (and his reader [of Marlenes Schwester: Zwei Erzählungen]) to some continuity, could surely tell a gripping story; he is wonderfully exact at times. If it were all intended the way it reads, one would have to question the solidity of [its] "narrative means." As it is, there is much faddish non sequitur in all this which leads to little else but disruption of many well-spun threads in a narrative web which the reader is never allowed to contemplate in its entirety.