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New Paperbacks: »Now, at 21, I know what I need. I want to be alone as much as possible«

2023-01-25T13:39:50.037Z


An anthology that deals with the happiness (and unhappiness) of being alone, a chilling murder case in Hamburg - and how do you actually explain the Holocaust to young people? These six new paperbacks are worth reading.


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The main thing alone (symbol image)

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»On luck alone«

The title of the anthology sounds a bit too optimistic for what is in it;

they're not

happy stories

about finding yourself or anything like that.

The stories are disturbing, sometimes disturbing.

Joey Goebel's

story »Unsere Olivia« marks the beginning: A young man, alone and desperate, falls in love with a news presenter.

One evening he is waiting for her in front of the television studio, where he meets another of Olivia's suitors.

At this point at the latest, reading becomes creepy and uncomfortable, but you can't put it down.

Luckily the story isn't too long.

And the happiness promised in the title of the book also appears in her.

Diary entries by

Patricia Highsmith

are scattered throughout the volume and encourage reflection on one's own life.

And to feel a bit of melancholy at the young writer's self-confidence: »It's so wonderful to go through life alone!

Now, at 21, I know what I need.

I want to be alone as much as possible.«

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Katherine Mansfield, Joey Goebel, Doris Dörrie and many others

From luck alone

Publisher: Diogenes

Number of pages: 240

Publisher: Diogenes

Number of pages: 240

Buy for €13.00

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01/25/2023 2:35 p.m

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An excerpt of

Daniel Schreiber

's book »Alone« can be found in the collection.

It is an outline of the challenges of living alone and suffering from depression.

Because: »Loneliness is a side effect of living alone.

How difficult it is to accept that.« But being alone does not always mean loneliness, and that is what Schreiber describes as well.

By the way, it is worth reading the whole book (it will be published in paperback in April).

The happiness of being alone can sometimes even be found in solitude, as suggested by

Banana Yoshimoto

's story.

It says: »And even in the darkness of that loneliest night, when her mother died, something grabbed Tomo in her arms.

The velvet glow of the night, the wind that caressed her skin, the twinkling of the stars, things like that.”

So the booklet only offers a little consolation, but instead a lot of food for thought.

And as you know, you can do that very well on your own.

Serhij Zhadan: »boarding school«

"'Internat' is a little masterpiece," wrote my colleague Dirk Kurbjuweit in 2018 about Serhij Zhadan's novel.

There is not much to add: »Internat« is a captivating novel that takes you back to the Ukraine before the Russian invasion war - when not everyone in the so-called West had understood that there was a war in the East of the country even then.

The story of Pasha, who sets out to pick up his nephew from a boarding school, is oppressive and confusing.

It gives the reader an idea of ​​what Ukrainians have been going through for years.

Last year, Zhadan received the Peace Prize of the German book trade, and by now you should be reading »Internat« in paperbacks.

Lana Bastašić: »Catch the Hare«

Two childhood friends meet again after twelve years and go on a search: for a missing brother, for their identity, for home.

Lana Bastašić' road trip novel leads from Mostar to Vienna and across the young women's memories of the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Although their memories do not always match and what may have been the truth cannot be determined.

But the author warns against this on the first few pages: "Good stories don't tell about what happens anyway.

They only leave images, like drawings on the sidewalk, on which the years fall like rain.« »Catch the Hare« leaves behind many images and is her first novel, with which she won one of the European Union Literature Prizes in 2020.

Scott McClanahan: »Sarah«

»No one showed me my future, in which everything I knew and loved would disappear.

… Nothing that resembled the devil in any way.

Just me.

Whole hell.” In “Sarah,” you watch a man wreck his marriage and family life.

This is sometimes difficult to bear.

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Scott McClanahan

Sarah

Number of pages: 208

Number of pages: 208

Buy for €12.00

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"I ruined our lives and it felt so damn great," they say as Scott, drunk, 120 km/h and his kids in the back seat thunders down the highway.

You briefly wish you hadn't touched this book and at the same time you're glad to be able to read it.

It is a supposedly banal life that is described there, with many lows and rare highs.

Clemens Setz's translation is succinct and funny, sometimes gentle - it's a pleasure to read while shivers run down your spine.

Reiner Engelmann: »I am a Jew«

Simon Weiß is insulted as a Jew for the first time at a football game when he is still a boy.

Only gradually does he understand what that means.

And as a reader, do you understand how much it affects the thinking and feeling of a Jewish child to find out what happened under National Socialism.

As an adult, you don't learn any new facts, but you do learn a child's perspective on something that you really don't want to show children, but still have to show them.

In his new youth book, Reiner Engelmann has parents explain the Holocaust to their children based on their own family history.

And little Simon will later explain to his little sister why it is so wrong for the Corona lateral thinkers to call themselves the new Jews.

It is sensitive reading, for young people, but also for adults who meet young people.

Simone Buchholz: »Revolver Heart«

Prosecutor Chastity Riley is exactly what you would expect as a reader who has been socialized with German television, but much better.

She smokes and drinks, is of course single, has an affair with a younger man, which could also be a romantic relationship if she weren't such a loner.

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Simone Buchholz

gun heart

Publisher: Suhrkamp

Number of pages: 244

Publisher: Suhrkamp

Number of pages: 244

approx. €14.95

price query time

01/25/2023 2:35 p.m

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Simone Buchholz' crime series, of which »Revolverherz« is the first part, is a detailed declaration of love for Hamburg.

The rugged romance of the harbour, the dingy greyness, the brutal neighborhood and its broken figures, the many counters where you can sit and be silent.

Appropriately, the chapters have mainly melancholy titles: »I only get lonely when someone is there«.

They read like reminders that lonely people are not alone in their loneliness.

The criminal case itself is horrific: the victim is a young woman and is found on the Elbe.

Quite unclassically she was scalped.

But more should not be revealed, after all it is a thriller.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2023-01-25

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