Manafonistas

 

 
 
 
„She´s mad at Dad.“
„What did he do?“
„Nothing. But he´s God.“
 
„If you mention God to me one more time, I’ll leave you, I swear I will.“
 
 
Ariel is found dead with a cracked scull and – as it turns out – pregnant. Ordinary Grace is no longer just another coming of age novel. Tom and Huck are gone. Now it´s all about loss, grieve and trying to cope. „Loss, once it´s become a certainty, it is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It´s solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away.“

Whereas Frank´s father Nathan seems to find faith, hope and love in God, Frank´s mother Ruth blames God and her husband for their misery. Ruth is suffering. „She was flesh without spirit, eyes without sight.“ Extraordinary and strong-minded Ruth who is a superb musician and singer, who likes to smoke and drink and hates cooking and ironing, is paralysed for a while and then turns her anger into action. She leaves her family.

The murder mystery will be solved easily. What still gets me hooked is the quite impressive lucidity of Ordinary Grace´s multilayered story which is far from being simple and does not seem to offer simple solutions.

Thomas Schirmer
 
–
 
 

Warren River

Ariel is dead.

Frank found her floating in the river: „The day was hot and windless and the sky a china blue and I alone on the railroad bridge and cried my heart out above a river that seemed to have none.“

I only remember another book which moved me to tears too: Die Brueder Loewenherz, written by Astrid Lindgren. The book starts so fatal that I couldn’t keep reading it. Years later I tried again to read that sad story about the two brothers who are similar close as the two boys of the Drum family. One after the other died.
 
Jake: I´m afraid you´ll die, too.

Jake: I won´t mind dying. I just don´t want you to die.
 
The brothers talked about death just after Frank returned from church. Jake and Ruth had stayed at home. What a great idea of the author to let their father give a sermon about his quarrelling community using the words of the first letter to the Corinthians.:

„What´s left to us when that which we love most has been taken? I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope and love.“
 
Lajla Nizinski
 
–
 
OG
 
Oh, soz.
 
Soz, parallel readers. I’ve bailed. I skimmed to the end. Yuh huh …
 
Got fed up of Frankie’s interminable 60s-simulacrum world. Jello fucking Franco-American Spaghetti fucking Studebaker fucking soda fucking John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev fucking nuclear war. Fucking blah.
 
But …
 
An association bled into my mind during chapter 3. The 1957 novel „There Is A Happy Land“ by Keith Waterhouse. Extravagantly, profoundly depressing, it tells the story (from first person viewpoint) of an 11 year old Leeds council estate kid over some months, starting during a summer in the late 1930s. In a way not unlike Catcher in the Rye, events are recounted from a point in the narrator’s life not too far on from the time when the story takes place. The memories are new, vivid and made all the more excruciating because the narrator hasn’t matured enough yet to see the story for what it is – for him it’s just a time in his life, some stuff that happened. Waterhouse’s novel makes Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s „Voyage au bout de la nuit“ look like melodrama by comparison. „There Is A Happy Land“ is a mediumistic classic, by the way. Read it. I’m grateful to William Kent Krueger for reminding me of its existence.
 
OG? Naw. Soz. Enjoyed some of what I read. Enjoyed not enjoying the rest. But Life’s too fuckin‘ short. The Bone Clocks now.
 
Soz.
 
Ian McCartney

Er las den Roman einer Bekannten, Expense of Spirit, es ging um zwei Paare, es spielte im Hochsommer, am Meer, es ging darum, wie sie sich in ihren Beziehungen erlebten, erfanden, es war, nun ja, fand er, ein Schuss zu viel Dekadenz darin, es mochte an der Landschaft gelegen haben, am Meer und im Sommer, da ist alles leicht, aber wie ist es in den Bergen, im Winter, da kann man sich abarbeiten an einem eher feindlichen Umfeld, vor allem, wenn man Anfang Dreißig ist, und nicht mehr fliehen kann in irgend ein Jungsein, es kommt darauf an, den eigenen Ansprüchen gerecht zu werden, keine Ausflüchte mehr, da hat eine Frau vielleicht ein Haus geerbt und weil es schön ist, zieht sie mit einer Freundin ein, es gibt einen Skilehrer, eine Freundin, die einen Roman übersetzt, es gibt ein Krankenhaus, ein Zimmertheater und einen Filmvorführer, der immerzu Fotos macht und sie nach Datum beschriftet in ein Album einklebt, sein tägliches Ritual, und der fast etwas verschreckt wirkt, wenn die Frau, mit der er sich verabredet hat, wirklich im Café erscheint, da gibt es die bunten Lampen im Haus, die ständig unaufgeräumte Küche, Weihnachten ist gerade vorbei, Tage, an denen der Schnee an den Rändern der Straßen sich anhäuft, du musst nicht mit mir reden, aber wie ist es, wenn neben dir jemand am Tresen sitzt und damit beginnt, Eigenschaftswörter von dir aufzuzählen, und, weil du das Spiel gerade bei ihm angefangen hast, musst du zuhören: „abwartend … zögernd … verschlossen … kontrolliert.“ „Aber das stimmt doch gar nicht.“ Die Kunst besteht darin, Motive schweben zu lassen. Und ihnen, wenn sie entgleiten, einfach zuzusehen.

 
„Winterschläfer“ – Ein Film von Tom Tykwer (1997)

My son is living in Copenhagen at the moment. So the Copenhagen shootings came quiet close. The alleged shooter was killed just around the corner of the student house my son is staying now … IT’S REAL THIS WAY. Happy he is safe. He stayed at a friend’s place elsewhere in Copenhagen last night.
 
 
 

 
 
 
• During a second shooting, a gunman opened fire early Sunday morning at a Copenhagen synagogue, killing one and injuring two others.
 
• Police shot and killed a man about 5 a.m. in near the Nørrebro train station that they said was responsible for both attacks.