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Author Mozley: Fragile Paradise
Photo: Massimiliano Donati / Getty Images
Elmet, the region that gives this novel its somewhat mysterious name, is in England's far north.
Once upon a time, until the early 7th century, this area, now part of Yorkshire County, was a separate kingdom.
In her literary debut, Fiona Mozley establishes a new kingdom in this place.
A kingdom made up of just three people, a father, John Smythe, and his two children, 16-year-old Cathy, and her 14-year-old brother Danny, from whose point of view Mozley tells this story.
A kingdom that lasts less than a year, and which is ultimately destroyed by dark forces.
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Elmet: Roman
Author: Fiona Mozley
Translation: From the English by Thomas Gunkel
Publisher: btb Verlag
Number of pages: 320
Author: Fiona Mozley
Translation: From the English by Thomas Gunkel
Publisher: btb Verlag
Number of pages: 320
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11/26/2020 4:42 p.m.
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The author grew up in this area and the idea for the story came to her on a train journey back to London, where she worked in a travel agency.
In »Elmet« she recovers the landscape of her childhood, and that is one of the great strengths of this novel: how Mozley expresses nature in a language that always retains the amazed, still naive gaze of a 14-year-old boy, but In addition, a power of words has developed that irresistibly draws the reader into this barren world, whose beauty is difficult to understand: "Thick, soft waves that crashed on wooded coasts and threw tiny creatures against protruding rocks", Danny describes the flight of with a fascination Common swifts in a gusty wind.
They hunt together and eat what they have grown themselves
In addition, we learn how to manage a forest, grow cabbage or lettuce, make your own cider or raise chickens - the novel is good as an escapism intensifier for "Landlust" readers who feel a longing for the simple life - unlike Delia Owens' Mega -Best seller »The song of the crayfish« - but only to a limited extent.
Mozley does not propagate a "return to nature", does not get lost in nostalgia: the apparent paradise in which the family lives is fragile, she makes this clear from the start.
This is not about small or large escapes, but about survival.
But on your own terms.
By the time the novel begins, the catastrophe has already happened, Danny is on his way further north in search of his sister.
The fate of his father remains a secret at first, there has been a devastating fire, Mozley does not reveal more.
The short passages from Danny's journey give the novel its framework, the much larger space is taken up by the story of the small family and their - ultimately in vain - attempt to create a home for themselves.
This arises in a small, neglected forest: Here the three - their mother disappeared some time ago - away from civilization, but not far from the next village - build a simple hut.
They hunt together and eat what they have grown themselves.
Defend the dream of a self-determined life
This self-imposed isolation has a lot to do with the father's past.
This John Smythe is a giant and has superhuman powers.
For his children he becomes an almost mystical figure, a mixture of knight and Robin Hood.
In a world where there is no consistency, her father has become the only reliable authority.
"Nothing is certain," Danny says once, and Cathy replies: "Yes, Daddy."
His stature also makes Smythe someone who can be useful to other men, be it to intimidate competitors, collect rents or to ensure betting wins in illegal fistfights.
And so he used to fight, fight over and over and always win.
It is a motif from classic westerns that Mozley interweaves here: The essentially violent man who believes he has made his peace with himself and the world has to fight again to achieve his dream of a self-determined life on his own piece of land defend.
But he cannot win this very last fight because the force that compels him to this fight is stronger than the strongest man in the world.
This force, that is civilization, means that it is no longer the stronger that wins, but the more powerful.
In "Elmet" he is named Mr Price.
He's the largest landowner in the area - he owns the forest in which Smythe and his children live - and most of the people here work for him, black and on starvation wages, to pay the rents for the shabby houses, the Price bought cheaply from the community.
Mozley also tells about this, without ever mentioning the name Margaret Thatcher: How England's north fell victim to neoliberalism after the end of mining in the mid-1980s.
But even if Mozley built the darkling Price (including two failed sons) a little close to the cliché of the arch-common capitalist, as a hate figure like Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge: The all too simple constellation of the duality of "those down there" against "those up there "Don't leave them like that.
Mozley exposes it as a nostalgic narrative - and as a male-dominated narrative: "The men who came together so naturally to support each other then went home drunk and beat up their wives. (...) There are dreams (...) and there are Memories. And there are memories of dreams. "
Mozley's western from the north of England is a tale of toxic masculinity, an endless cycle of violence from which there seems to be no way out.
For this she chooses, very cleverly, the perspective of a 14-year-old boy who is just about to discover his homosexuality and who has no interest in hunting and fighting and all the other man things.
How intensely and closely Mozley tells this painful story of growing up, of family ties and the struggle for survival, also impressed the jury of the Man Booker Prize: In 2017, the then completely unknown 29-year-old made it onto the shortlist with »Elmet«, in the company of big names like Paul Auster, Ali Smith and the eventual winner George Saunders.
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