AGNES. Peter Stamm. Translated by Michael Hofmann. 165pp. Bloomsbury. Pounds

12.99. 0 7475 4752 1.

Peter Stamm's first novel, Agnes, begins with the end: "Agnes is dead. Killed by a story. All that's left of her now is this story." The narrator is her lover, a nameless character who confesses to egoism and cynicism: "I'm not a good man", he tells us. Having failed as a literary author (his first collection of stories sold 187 copies), he is researching a book on American luxury trains, in the Chicago Public Library, when Agnes takes the seat opposite him. He is struck immediately by the expressiveness of her eyes which seem to communicate in a language, "which I didn't know how to read".

Agnes, who is writing a scientific thesis on symmetrical crystal structures, is impressed that he is a published author and shows him a story she has written.

It has a childlike simplicity and is strikingly symmetrical, the first and last lines echoing each other. But he is embarrassed, and his tone is patronizing:

"You can't just sit down and expect to write a novel in a week." He

compares writing to a mathematical formula in an analogy that attempts to bridge the two

cultures of science and literature: "It's like you've got an unknown X in your head that you're trying to find."

Yet when she explains her work using X-ray slides depicting symmetrical patterns of atoms there is no condescension in her voice, only pure enthusiasm that reveals a profound wonder at the world: "'The mystery is the void at the centre,' she said, 'what you don't see, the