Status: 29/08/2023, 16:49 p.m.
By: Sven Trautwein
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Temperatures have turned in many parts of the country. Reason enough to retire with a great novel. We present four that are worthwhile.
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With falling temperatures and rainy weather, there is nothing better than retreating with a coffee, tea or other favorite drink, with a great and entertaining book that you will remember in a few months. Maybe one of those favorite places to read is included.
"Paradise Garden" by Elena Fischer and three other titles are the most readable novels from August 2023. © Bernd Friedel/Imago/Diogenes (montage)
Elena Fischer "Paradise Garden"
What is initially a mother-daughter story develops into a grandmother-mother-daughter story as the story progresses. The novel about the 14-year-old, courageous protagonist is convincing in its entirety. The search for the unknown father, the traumas of the mother, all these make the novel worth reading and loving. Everything that was possible at the beginning of summer shatters from one moment to the next. Elena Fischer has been nominated for the German Book Prize 2023 with "Paradise Garden".
14-year-old Billie spends most of her time in her high-rise housing estate. At the end of the month, the money is only enough for pasta with ketchup, but her mother Marika makes Billie's world shine with imagination and a big heart. Then the grandmother arrives from Hungary unwanted, and Billie loses much more than just the colorful everyday life with her mother. When she can't ask Marika any more questions, Billie drives off alone in the old Nissan – she has to find the father she doesn't know and find out why she dreams of the sea so often, even though she's never been there.
Blurb/Diogenes
Elena Fischer "Paradise Garden"
2023 Diogenes, ISBN-13 978-3-257-07250-1
Price: Hardcover 23 €, 352 pages
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Jaap Robben "Contour of a Life"
"Contour of a Life" is also about traumatic motherhood, this time the story takes place in the Netherlands in the 1960s: illegitimate motherhood, dead birth and social conditions provide the framework of the novel. The description of Frieda during different stages of life is convincing and goes to the heart.
The young florist Frieda grew up in a strictly Catholic environment in the sixties. When she enters a frozen river on a late winter afternoon, she doesn't know that everything is about to change for her. On the ice, she meets the married Otto. They experience a love that begins stormily and ends fatefully: Frieda becomes pregnant – a scandal in the world in which she moves. And so she is never allowed to be a mother to her secret child. For decades, she kept the memories of this episode of her life to herself. But the grief for the lost child remains, despite the later marriage, despite the son she still has. At the age of eighty-one, Frieda is suddenly alone again. The silent sorrow returns with a vengeance.
Blurb/Dumont
Jaap Robben "Contour of a Life"
2023 Dumont, ISBN-13 978-3-832-16818-6
Price: Hardcover 24 €, 333 pages
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Julie Otsuka "As long as we swim"
Julie Otsuka's works deal with themes such as love and loss, grief and memory, as well as the complex relationships between mothers and daughters. With an impressive variety of surprising perspectives and a remarkable sense of the ironic in the serious, she writes about the important question of what obligations we have to our parents. A book that is thought-provoking and should be remembered longer. For fans of "Nordstadt" and "22 Bahnen". With us you will find more books that take place in the swimming pool.
They feel at home in their swimming pool, where they can leave their worries behind during their daily laps: designers, nuns, dog sitters, vegans, police officers, professors, actors... Until one day a crack appears – at the bottom of the pool, but also in the memory of Alice, who, just like the others here, has always found comfort and support in swimming. While she soon only swims in fragmentary memories, her daughter tries to put herself in her mother's shoes, to re-explore their relationship to each other and to give Alice's life back meaning and context.
Blurb/mareverlag
Julie Otsuka "As long as we swim"
2023 mareverlag, ISBN-13 978-3-866-48691-1
Price: Hardcover 22 €, 160 pages
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J. M. Coetzee "The Pole"
Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee develops a profound story in a small space, which, as Deutschlandfunk writes, "concentrates on the little things in life". In a world that is always calling for the big stories, it's nice to be able to turn to J. M. Coetzee on a small scale. The perfect book for in between.
The protagonist, a graying maestro, is a pianist for whom Chopin's beauty lies in precision. Beatriz has only stepped in as host after his concert in Barcelona, but the pianist discovers in her the star that his love wants to follow. Beatriz's interpretations of Chopin's Nocturnes seem somewhat unappealing, and his declaration of love in the form of a cycle of poems in a foreign language presents her with the challenge of having to laboriously decipher their meaning. Nevertheless, a love affair develops between the two, which shows the difficulty of transmitting true feelings.
Blurb/S. Fischer Publishers
J. M. Coetzee "The Pole"
Translated by Reinhild Böhnke
S. Fischer Publishers, ISBN-13 978-3-103-97501-7
Price: Hardcover 20 €, 144 pages
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Looking for exciting entertainment? Crime fans will find the four best crime novels from August here.