Franziska Gänsler's debut novel »Eternal Summer«: Hope for rain

Enlarge image

Forest fires (here in the Czech Republic, near the Saxon border)

Photo: Robert Michael / picture alliance / dpa

Midsummer in October.

Silver foil on the windows, cordoned off playgrounds, empty streets.

We are in the fictional Bad Heim in southern Germany.

First-person narrator Iris runs the only hotel in town.

But nobody comes because forest fires are raging in the area.  

Franziska Gänsler's debut novel takes place in a near future in which climate activists have long since given up hope of stopping global warming at 1.5 degrees.

The new goal of the demonstrators at the edge of the forest: 1.8.

The atmosphere that Gänsler creates is dark and menacing.

The days crawl slowly, nothing changes, and yet everything changes.

It's 32 degrees, the meadows are covered with ash, the air is saturated with smoke.

In the distance, helicopters hum, sirens wail, the police call through: "Stay at home, wear a protective mask, keep windows and doors closed." The inferno of flames is taking place in the nearby forest behind the river.

But suddenly there is a woman with a little girl on Iris' mat.

In the midst of the great catastrophe, the small dramas also unfold: Dori, as the woman is called, not only has her daughter Ilya with her, but also problems.

Struggling with a broken relationship, she once ran into her misery and now ran away from it.

It's burning, not just outside.

advertisement

Franziska Gaensler

Summer forever

Publisher: None & But

Number of pages: 208

Publisher: None & But

Number of pages: 208

Buy for €23.00

price query time

7/30/2022 7:38 p.m

No guarantee

Order from Amazon

Order from Thalia

Order from Weltbild

Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.

Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the retailer when you make a purchase.

More information here

Gänsler's writing is calm and accurate.

Parallel to the fatal consequences of the climate crisis, she tells the stories of the women.

Not only Dori, but also Iris has a difficult history.

The author poses the question of whether one has taken the wrong path in life and thus fundamentally screwed up the future, both for private life and for the big picture.

At the same time, she works out how the characters deal with the guilt complex and the powerlessness in the face of the catastrophe.

Iris watches the world degenerate around her, but continues to live her life as usual, buying meat, driving a car.

"I couldn't see any way I could have influenced the situation." But when dealing with Ilya, she shows herself differently, worried, almost overcautious - perhaps also driven by a bad conscience, by having done too little.

So that Ilya does not become dehydrated, she is bathed every hour and is not allowed to leave the house.

In a panic, the adults make sure that she drinks enough.

Nevertheless, »Ewig Sommer« is not a depressing book.

The novel lights up whenever Iris' neighbor Baby shows up, a character that Gaensler has done particularly well.

Baby is the guard at the garden fence, the moral authority without morals.

She knows people better than they know themselves, gets involved, but also helps.

It is pleasantly loud, sometimes annoying and a bit out of shape.

She marches through life smoking and swinging chicken legs.

In her garden she has created a retreat for stray cats.

The other two women freeze in panic.

Baby does something, small.

While Dori is only busy with herself and Iris dreams about the past, it will be Baby who will later become a real heroine.

'A heat.

This is the end of the world.

That's the end of us," she says cheerfully.

As a reader you think: As long as there are people like her, the earth is not a hopeless place.