"[Irretrievable is] one of Fontane's most idiosyncratic achievements, and certainly one of the finest literary autopsies of a foundering relationship.... The pleasure of the novel lies in its subtlety–in this case, a discreet exploration of marital psychology. Here again, trouble starts within and, like a dry rot, eats its way outward....But even after the couple ostensibly reconcile, there's really nothing left; by the end of this mild yet anguished work, all that remains of the marriage is a lifeless residue of thwarted yearning–'nothing but the willingness to be happy.' As so often in the fiction of Theodor Fontane, that's not enough to save the characters, but it's a marvellous subject for a novel." - Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker
"A minor masterpiece of translation. . . "
–The Times Literary Supplement "No writer of past or present stirs in me that kind of sympathy and gratitude, that immediate, instinctive delight, that reflex gaiety, warmth, and satisfaction, which I feel reading any of Fontane's verse, any line of his letters, any scrap of dialogue."
–Thomas Mann
