I love planning travel – dreaming of destinations, digging into the adventures to be had, and always, always reading. And although the pandemic has really harshed my mellow, I’m back to dreaming and scheming trips to take in the next few years. Austria and Switzerland are both high on my list, and I’m tentatively targeting summer 2023. I can already see the blue gentians waving and smell the Alpine meadow grass… Who knows if it will happen? I hope it does, and until the day I finally board that plane, I can dip into my stash of books set in Austria.
Crossed Skis, by Carol Carnac (a lesser-used pen name of E.C.R. Lorac) follows a group of friends, acquaintances, and some last-minute fill-ins as they depart for a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps. Unfortunately, back in London, a corpse has turned up with a bewildering connection to a skier, and the entire holiday party – off enjoying sun and crisp snow on the slopes – find themselves suspects. The book ends with a thrilling chase on skis. Read this with cocoa, ideally in a cozy mountain chalet somewhere.
Speaking of chalets, The School at the Chalet, first in Elinor M. Brent-Dyer‘s classic children’s series, is full of them. An English brother and two sisters, recently alone in the world, hit upon the idea of starting a school for young girls in the Austrian Tyrol. (Because why not?) You have to suspend a lot of disbelief here, but it’s worth it for the luscious descriptions of Austria and the rollicking school life at the immediately, impossibly successful Chalet School. There are wildflowers, good food, and mountain adventures. What’s not to like?
If you’re more of a city type, perhaps I could suggest Magic Flutes, by Eva Ibbotson. (Ibbotson is another one who requires some suspension of disbelief, but I’m really good with that.) Magic Flutes tells the story of an Austrian princess who runs away from her fairy-tale castle to follow her opera dreams in Vienna. It’s pure confection, but such fun. (On this theme, I have Ibbotson’s A Glove Shop in Vienna on my to-read-soon stack…)
This stack might not be as good as being in the Tyrol, or even the next best thing, but until I can get there myself it’s what I’ve got. Any Austrian book recommendations for me?
covered in flour 
I really enjoyed The Walll by Marlen Haushofer, but it is a very different Austria book than those you’ve included here… more of a survival story. An unnamed woman is staying in a mountain lodge and her companions don’t return from a trip to the nearby village. The next day she tries to walk into town to find them and discovers she is trapped behind a new, mysterious, transparent wall. Everyone she can see through the wall appears to have been petrified, farmers turned into stone statues working their fields. The novel is her writing, years later, about how she survives living alone and caring for the few animals behind the wall with her, a detailed accounting of planting potatoes and cutting hay, stockpiling wood and food for the harsh alpine winters, forgetting the taste of sugar and the sound of her name, observing wild creatures and the cycles of the seasons. It is beautiful but also slightly bleak.
That definitely sounds like a different book than I’m normally drawn to – but sounds really good! Putting it on my list to check it out. Thanks for the rec!