'Yes'

Yes begins with 477 uninterrupted words. No, I didn't think the entire novel was one long sentence, but it began to feel as such.

There is just one paragraph break in the entire book. Just one long rant by the unnamed narrator, who is pondering suicide. He is lonely living in the outskirts of an Austrian village. His only friend is a real estate agent, Moritz. He finds a sort of redemption when a Swiss businessman and his companion, the Persian woman, arrives and purchases a piece of land to build a house.

The narrator inundates the Persian with his philosophy and thoughts about life and suicide during long walks in nearby woods. Unloading himself on her.

Later we learn that he was merely prepping her for her own suicide, which happens when she walks out in front of a concrete truck.

Thomas Bernhard's works lean heavily on death and suicide. He labored with TB as a child and continuously thought of death, which was probably debilitating as a child.