'The Mussel Feast' by Birgit Vanderbeke (Review)

January in Japan, having taken up a whole month of my reading time, is finally over, so it's time to return to a more varied literary diet for a while.  And talking of food, the first Peirene of the year is particularly mouthwatering - and also a very good book...

*****
Birgit Vanderbeke's Das Muschelessen (English version translated by Jamie Bulloch) is a short modern classic very much in the vein of Peirene's offerings so far.  A family sits at home waiting for the father to return from a business trip.  A pot of mussels (his favourite food) is there ready on the table to celebrate the promotion he has been expecting.  However, he appears to be late, unexpectedly so - this is not a family where surprises are common...

The other three members of the family (mother, daughter and son) grow impatient and start to talk - and it becomes clear that this is not a happy family.  Stories unfold,  grievances are aired, hearts are poured out, and soon we realise that they'd be happy if the man of the house never came home at all...

Das Muschelessen is another excellent choice, a work which is surprisingly powerful and layered for its size.  One one level it is a character study of a dysfunctional, cowering family, victims of traditional, patriarchal, German society (where a woman's place is firmly proscribed and the man of the family is to obeyed at all times).  At first, it is tempting to think that they're exaggerating and a little unfair; certainly, without prior knowledge of the family's history, the initial reactions seem a little overdone.  Eventually, though, as the father's personality (and cruelty) is revealed, the reader is certain to take the side of the oppressed.

Vanderbeke sketches out an environment of gender stereotypes and a home ruled by fear.  The mother is described as changing roles and faces as required, subordinating her own will to pander to the father's twisted idea of a 'richtige Familie' (real family):

"In richtigen Familien hat man Verbote nicht nötig, hat mein Vater gesagt, und sie sind wirklich überflüssig gewesen, weil wir uns immer verstanden haben, und wenn ich manchmal trotzig gewesen bin und gesagt habe, keineswegs, hat es von vorn angefangen, und es ist immer so lange gegangen, bis ich auf seine Frage, haben wir uns verstanden, mich beeilt habe zu sagen, das haben wir..."
p.120 (Piper Verlag, 2012)

"In real families rules are not necessary, my father always said, and in truth they weren't needed because we always understood each other, and if I was occasionally a little defiant and said, no way, it started all over again, and it went on until, in answer to his question, do you understand, I hastened to say, yes, I do..."*** 

Just as in any dictatorship, dissent is frowned upon and is stamped out as quickly as possible in particularly nasty ways...

On another level though, Vanderbeke is using a family setting to criticise something much wider.  Das Muschelessen was written in 1990, but set just before the events known in German as 'die Wende' (which Peirene followers may be interested to know translates as 'turning point'...), and even though the nameless protagonists have settled in the west, the book is an indictment of East German society.  The father is a head of state, demanding complete loyalty from his subjects; that he is able to achieve it is due to the same methods used in the DDR.

If there was solidarity between the other members of the family, then the father's castle in the air would soon come tumbling to earth.  However, just as in 'real life', the rest of the family are unable to resist the temptation to seek favour:

"...meine Mutter hat pssst gemacht weil sie Angst hatte, er könnte uns hören, dabei war er doch gar nicht da, aber so ist das bei uns gewesen, jeder hat gedacht, er weiß alles und hört alles und sieht alles, obwohl wir gewußt haben, daß das ja gar nicht geht, und wirklich hat er ziemlich viel herausgekriegt, weil jeder jeden verpetzt hat..." p.36

"...my mother went shhh because she was afraid he might hear us, even though he wasn't even there, but that's how it was in our house, everyone thought he knows everything and hears everything and sees everything, although we knew that this was impossible, and he actually did find out a lot, because we all told on each other..."***

Tonight is very different though - the longer the father's arrival is delayed, the more unwilling the rest of the family is to put up with living in fear.

While the book fits nicely into Peirene's collection with its content and length, its style is also reminiscent of its stable-mates.  The book consists of one unbroken paragraph, with a few long sentences, broken up into waves of short clauses.  The effect of this style (reminiscent of Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman) is to produce a sense of urgency and intensity.  At times, the first-person narrative can slip almost into stream-of-consciousness mode, but this just makes the description of the father's violence even more abrupt and stunning when it comes.

In terms of content though, Das Muschelessen is more similar to Next World Novella.  Both works deal with the unravelling of a lie, the unmasking of a tyrant, in a way over which he has no control.  I would talk about character assassination, but that suggests that the accusations are unfair and ungrounded.  Although we are reliant on our narrator, there is little doubt that it is high time for the domestic regime to be overthrown.

This year's Peirene collection has been entitled 'The Turning Point: Revolutionary Moments', and it is easy to see how Das Muschelessen fits in with this motto.  It is a work which shows that the smallest turning point can prove to be the catalyst for changes which were previously unthinkable.  It all makes for a book which can quite rightly claim to be labelled a modern classic - it is taught in German schools, and rightly so.

All in all, it looks like 2013 is shaping up to be another good year for the nymph ;)

*****
***All translations are my sorry efforts, and not those of the Peirene version ;)

I Spy, With My Little Eye...

Although Peirene Press is a champion of literature from all over Europe, their list has a strongly Teutonic slant, and that will continue next year with the publication of German writer Birgit Vanderbeke's Das Muschelessen (The Mussel Feast).  Knowing a while back that a Vanderbeke was on the way (but not knowing which one!), I plumped instead for an intriguingly-titled novella, one which takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery.   Good job we've got the bus then :)

*****
Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst (I See Something You Don't - or, less literally, I Spy With My Little Eye) begins in post-reunification Berlin, a city where a woman with a young son has recently taken up residence in an attempt to make a change to her life.  Finding that a small alteration is not enough, she decides on a slightly more dramatic gesture - one which sees her buy a place in the south of France, to which she soon moves, along with her son and various other domestic animals ;)

Initially, she treats life like an extended break, taking advantage of the long school holidays to explore life in a new setting (with a son who is only too eager to spend his days messing around in woods and rivers).  If she wanted a change, then her new home is everything she was looking for.  It is a foreign land, with unfamiliar weather, confusing wind patterns and frankly frightening bush-fires.   And as for the people... well, let's just say that they do things a little differently here.

While Ich sehe was... sounds like a typical fish-out-of-water, sea-change kind of story, it's actually a lot more.  The beautiful painting on the cover of my cover (by Van Gogh) gives you a hint of the kind of story it is.  Vanderbeke avoids a straight-forward, realist (dare I say it, German...)  description of her character's experiences, opting instead for a more hazy, flowing narrative which skirts around the need for excessive description.

Our unnamed friend, despite her initial problems, is very happy in her new life - you suspect that one of the reasons she decided to move in the first place is that she didn't fit into her home society.  Vanderbeke's Germany is one of grey skies, low-grade paranoia, a fear of leaving keys in locks and a need to have a constant supply of egg cartons on hand for primary school art projects.

Luckily, life is a lot less stressful in France.  As she makes her way to a local festival with her son, they spot something interesting in the road:

"Vor der Stadt stand ein Schild, auf dem stand >>Straße gesperrt, Stadt feiert<<.  Ich übersetze es dem Kind, und wir fanden, alle Verbotsschilder müßten ein bißchen so sein wie dieses..."
p.60 (Fischer Verlag, 2009)

"On the edge of town, there was a sign which said "Street blocked, Town celebrates".  I translated it for the child, and we decided that all warning signs should be a little like this one..."

While the chaos of the festival (with bulls making an unexpected entrance) is a little unnerving, the pace of life gradually starts to make sense.  Where initially the local custom of deliberating over every food purchase seems a little silly  (each potato being inspected minutely before being placed in the basket), our friend soon starts to pay more attention to her own groceries - and is helped by the local shopkeepers too, who begin to see her as more of a local than a tourist.

She soon discovers that many other things are different here, and one of those is the fact that in this small community (and in the country as a whole...) everybody does everything at the same time.  This applies to shopping, social gatherings and - most importantly - the annual return to school, when the whole of France goes shopping for new clothes and stationery.  It's a small, but happy, coincidence that Emma posted on this very phenomenon while I was in the middle of this book...

As much as we learn about the French though, ritual mocking of Teutonic efficiency is never far from the surface.  Visitors to our hero's new house are concerned only with how it can be improved (and how much it would bring in each week when properly run as a guest house), and a French girl from the local school asks:

"...Madame, ist es wahr, daß man bei Ihnen bestraft wird, wenn man einen Joghurtbecher auswirft, ohne ihn vorher auszuwaschen." p.71

"... Madame, is it true that you are punished in your country if you throw away a yoghurt tub without washing it first."

It's a comment which brings back some rather disturbing memories from my own time in Germany...

Ich sehe was... is an excellent book, a novella which can be devoured in a couple of sittings, but one which contains more than you would think.  Like the picture which adorns the cover, it requires us to adjust the way we see things, to open our eyes to new experiences and see them in (literally) a different light.  Vanderbeke's style is pivotal to this - her sentences are lengthy but light, caught between narrative and dialogue, giving the story an airy, at times slightly unreal, feel.

I can see why Peirene wanted Vanderbeke as their next writer.  Her style will fit in perfectly with some of the other offerings, and if Das Muschelessen is anything like this one, it will continue their run of great choices.  I'll certainly be trying it (in the original, of course!) - I just hope that the poor old Germans don't come off quite as badly next time...