264 Reviews bite the bullet and use the latest edition. None the less, this is a work that challenges the prevailing orthodoxy on Tucholsky's dealings with France with important consequences for our understanding of the whole of the complex and frustrating career of a man whose prophetic writings were so disastrously ignored in his day. Royal Holloway, University of London Robert Vilain Sentiment und Sachlichkeit: Der Roman der Neuen Frau in der Weimarer Republik . By Kerstin Barndt. (Literatur?Kultur?Geschlecht, GroBe Reihe, 19) Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Bohlau. 2003. ix + 229 pp. ?34.50. ISBN 3412 -09701-2. In this excellent study, Kerstin Barndt examines the three best-known 'New Woman' novels of the Weimar Republic: stud. chem. Helene Willfiier (1928) by Vicki Baum, and Gilgi, eine von uns (1931) and Das kunstseideneMadchen (1932), both by Irmgard Keun. Barndt describes how Baum and Keun depict young women struggling with the emotional, professional, and familial conflicts to which their new role gives rise. Unlike much of the secondary literature to date, Barndt's study does not attempt to define the extent to which such texts present a genuinely 'emancipated' image of women. Rather, she argues that the dichotomy between 'feminist' and 'non-feminist' portrayals, as well as those between 'Neue Sachlichkeit' and 'melodrama', between 'high' and 'low' culture, between the politically afflrmativeand the politically oppo? sitional, and between producers and recipients of literary texts, do not hold when applied to 'middlebrow' novels by women writers of this period. After providing an illuminating history of the Weimar Republic's book industry, Barndt analyses how the three authors in question integrated elements from differentcontemporary dis? courses, such as that of popular science, to produce heterogeneous texts with a broad appeal for the women of their day. Their mixture of sentiment and sobriety should be seen, not as an aesthetic failing, but as a successful example of literary experimentation . Barndt's sensitive close readings are theoretically informed as well as firmlyanchored in their historical and literary context. Stud. chem.Helene Willfiier,she argues, is the most melodramatic of the texts, with a narrative shaped by the Lebensideologie of the period. In her analysis of Gilgi, Barndt diagnoses the heroine's crisis as a cri? sis of language; identifies the strategies Keun employs to convey the impression of 'authenticity'; and discusses Keun's refusal to take up a clear political position. She shows that Keun's second novel, Das kunstseidene Madchen, adopts a sophisticated and self-reflexive aesthetic approach, betraying the influence both of the picaresque novel and of the new medium of film. In this text, the New Woman heroine observes and comments on the construction of her own identity, Sentiment und Sachlichkeit addresses too many issues to offer a single, unified argument, an impression reinforced by the lack of a conclusion. This breadth may explain why, in her discussion of the reception of the primary texts at their period, Barndt does not quite deliver what she has promised in her introduction. Rather than demonstrating the mutual influence of author and reader in the production of images of the 'New Woman', she largely restricts herself to documenting the responses of particular readers. As Barndt argues is the case with the New Woman novels she discusses, however, the disparate range of her undogmatic, original, and well-researched study should undoubtedly be considered a strength. Birkbeck, University of London Anna Richards ...