Described as a “prodigy,” thirty-five-year-old Daniel Kehlmann, with German and Austrian citizenship, has already published four novels and a short story collection, winning the 2005 Candide Award, the 2006 Kleist Award, and the 2008 Thomas Mann Award. Kehlmann’s nine stories all deal with the ironies of people caught between reality and fiction. In “Voices” Kehlman tells the story of Ebling, who is mistakenly assigned the private number of famous actor Ralf Tanner when he buys a new cellphone. When he begins to answer as the actor, “It was as if he had a doppelganger, his representative in a parallel universe.” In “The Way Out,” Ralf Tanner the actor illustrates what has happened to his life since Ebling started answering his phone calls, his professional career and personal life in ruins. He participates in a disco contest which awards prizes to the person who most resembles someone famous, but is criticized because his body language is “not correct” for the actor Ralf Tanner. His use of a false name ironically gives him a chance at a real life.
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Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Psychological study on Jan 22nd, 2011
Author Jenn Ashworth takes the concept of irony to new heights in this psychological novel which rivals Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in its intensity, and it is in her irony that this novel achieves something that McCabe’s novel does not—it is pathetically funny at the same time that it is terrifyingly slow in its revelations of Annie’s past life. In the first six pages, Neil, Annie’s new next door neighbor, asks her if “the family,” especially her little girl, have arrived yet. Annie asserts that he must be confused–that it is only her and her cat, no husband, no daughter. Every remark and every action from this point on capitalizes on the reader’s understanding of real life as the author shows it being played out in conversations among the neighbors and other residents of the community, while Annie twists and manipulates what she sees and hears so that her reality will be what she wants it to be. Ashworth manages to depict a main character with a perverted sense of self and gross ignorance of the conventions of social intercourse while, at the same time satirizing the very suburban society which Annie wishes to be part of—a major achievement pulled off with panache and darkly humorous flair.
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Filled with dry, ironic humor, Quartet in Autumn is a poignant depiction of the lives of four elderly people, who have worked together for several years. All of them live alone, and none of them have much of a life outside of their repetitive and intellectually deadening jobs. They treat each other only as colleagues and not as friends, both in and out of the office. The two women consider the two men to be merely “part of the furniture,” and the men have no interest in the women beyond their function in the office. As a result, they have never socialized, visited each other’s houses or apartments, shared a lunch hour together, or come to know each other as human beings. When the two women retire, life for all of them changes dramatically. When the men decide to take the “old dears” to lunch several weeks after they retire, the four of them have their first social occasion, with mixed results. Pym is very funny, her images and description of events incomparable. She calls a spade a spade, and her ironic depiction of old age is one that no one nearing that age will ever forget.
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Set in 1963 in Wisla, the rural Polish town where author Jerzy Pilch himself grew up, A THOUSAND PEACEFUL CITIES a satirical, fictional retelling of life in Poland in the years preceding the Student Revolt of 1968, disguising the autobiographical memories it contains. In 1963, the Communist party is in power, and the country is under Soviet influence but not control. At the outset of the novel, the reader immediately discovers that Jerzyk’s father and his father’s friend, Mr. Traba, an alcoholic former clergyman, plan to kill First Secretary Wladysaw Gomulka in Warsaw. They had, at first, thought of killing Mao Tse-tung to make a statement but decided it was impractical: “Better a sparrow in the hand than Mao Tse-tung on the roof.” What follows is a wild ride through rural Poland in 1963, novel that is, by turns, hilarious, thoughtful, filled with metaphysical and dialectical argument, and embellished with lyrical details from the natural world. This is satire used for its most noble purposes.
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Once you enter the world of Trevor Comerford, you will not re-emerge unscathed. Formerly employed in Dublin at the Central Remedial Clinic, Trevor was empathetic and anxious to help his students in his English classes there, creating firm bonds of friendship with them by making them laugh at his vulgarity, by refusing to recognize their physical challenges as “limitations,” and by taking them on day-trips (which became shoplifting expeditions to the local shops). His departure from Dublin for a new life in New York City was made in full knowledge of the challenges he would have dealing with the chaos of that city’s street life, which, in many ways parallels the chaos in his own life. An ad Trevor finds in the Village Voice requests a companion for Ed, an extremely bright teenager with muscular dystrophy who has little time left to live, and Trevor, upon investigation, quickly learns that the typical “companion” for Ed lasts only a week. Thoughtful and often hilarious.
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