Jenny Erpenbeck
Hardcover | Pages: 152 pages Rating: 3.74 | 282 Users | 47 Reviews
Describe Books Supposing The Book of Words
| Original Title: | Wörterbuch |
| ISBN: | 184627057X (ISBN13: 9781846270574) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Nominee for Longlist (2008), International Dublin Literary Award Nominee (2009) |
Narrative In Favor Of Books The Book of Words
"What are my eyes for if I can see but see nothing?" ... wonders the child, "I must seize memory like a knife and turn it against itself, stabbing memory with memory. If I can." The old idiom "seeing is believing" is turned on its head: everything, the young girl muses, has turned into its opposite. "For me," she recalls, "words used to be stable, fixed in place, but now I'm letting them all go..." With such a poignant opening scenario Jenny Erpenbeck draws us immediately and deeply into a world that is both real and surreal. In a language that is both very poetic and at the surface undemanding, her story evolves into a profound, intricately structured and deeply affecting fictional memoir that reads at times like a fable, but then again also as a realistic account of a young girl's coming of age in extraordinary circumstances.While the events surrounding the girl's sheltered life suggest a concrete time and place, even without naming the country, the author is at pains to illustrate conditions and responses that many a young person may have to confront in a country under totalitarian rule. A rule in which, at least for a while, the young may be protected from the realities outside their pleasant cage by "high walls" and where gunshots are being interpreted as "blowing tires". Her friend Anna presents her with the most outlandish explanations for everything unusual that occurs, some funny, some macabre, but delivered with deadpan expression. The girl wonders, however, and tries to bring the different experiences into some reality she can understand. Her father, who adores her and spends evenings playing with her, usually avoids a direct comment to such explanations that she passes on to him. She is too young to worry her pretty head about it.
As she grows, more strictures affect her directly: in school, where she tried to look like everybody else, within the larger family, after she overhears conversations in which she is labelled as "there is something inherently spoiled about her". Most irritating are the confines her mother, the woman with eyes "the colour of water", imposes on her without explanations or motherly warmth to offset the increasing distance between mother and child. The girl has many questions about what she observes and the people around her and those who suddenly disappear from her immediate environment. But while she shares her questions and reflections with us, the readers, she remains reluctant to confront those around her. Eventually, as can be expected, the house of cards that had been build around her collapses...
It is not easy to convey the beauty of Erpenbeck's writing, despite its sombre topic, without revealing too much of the detailed content of the novel. In a short ninety pages, she creates a rich and emotionally charged universe that reaches far beyond the individual's story. Erpenbeck, who herself grew up under the confines and strictures of the East German state, brings her experiences to bear, although more in suggested parallels and hints than openly. Most evident is the frequent use of lines from German folksongs, ditties, or children rhymes. In the context of this novel, the often crude violence in such ancient sayings, which, as children, we would have repeated without understanding the content, underscores her concern about language and the many meanings of words. Susan Bernofsky, Erpenbeck's translator, adds some context to these and other aspects of the novel. However, I would strongly urge the reader NOT to look at the afterword before reading the book.
Having read THE BOOK OF WORDS ("Wörterbuch" in German, which incidentally suggests more complex connotations than the English title) following her brilliant, more recent novel, Visitation, I was prepared for Erpenbeck's extraordinary ability to mould language and imagery to her very personal needs and vision. In her home country she is widely regarded as the most poetic and innovative writer of the younger German writer generation. While her language and style are not the easiest to connect to, yet, once you do, you very likely can become hooked. Her latest novel, "Dinge, die verschwinden" (Things that disappear - not yet available in English) pursues her deep connection with words and their meanings.
Mention Appertaining To Books The Book of Words
| Title | : | The Book of Words |
| Author | : | Jenny Erpenbeck |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 152 pages |
| Published | : | 2007 by Portobello (first published 2004) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. European Literature. German Literature. Cultural. Germany. Novels |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Book of Words
Ratings: 3.74 From 282 Users | 47 ReviewsWrite Up Appertaining To Books The Book of Words
Erpenbeck's novel (novella?) is a surprising kind of tale, where the reader is not afforded the chance to become jaded by the ghastly nature of the events. Torture, sadism, and mutilation all make prominent plays in the course of the narrative, yet it never comes across as anything but skin-crawlingly terrible. To say anything more in this direction is to give away all the precious nightmares this book has to offer. Many have noted that the focalization is what gives this book all of itsI really liked the the perspective at first, from child's stream of consciousness. By midway through the book, I was pretty tired of it.
As noted in the translator's afterword, it's important to note the Germanness of this story despite being set in South America, some of which gets lost on the reader if you're not aware of the rhymes, references and historical context. Despite the sparse writing, the content feels incredibly dense. The dreamy, childish and innocent observations of the little girl always carries a tinge of brutality throughout the story and it all comes to ahead when she finds out the truth about her parents.
Let me state my point of view right from the start: I think Jenny Erpenbeck may just well be one of the very finest writers at work today. Her book Visitation has lingered for months after reading it, and her earlier book, The Book of Words is spellbinding in its spareness and power.The narrator, an unnamed little girl, relates the world around her in a prism of innocence. She attends school, goes on idyllic trip with her wet nurse although shes way past the age of breastfeeding, and lives in an
"What are my eyes for if I can see but see nothing?" ... wonders the child, "I must seize memory like a knife and turn it against itself, stabbing memory with memory. If I can." The old idiom "seeing is believing" is turned on its head: everything, the young girl muses, has turned into its opposite. "For me," she recalls, "words used to be stable, fixed in place, but now I'm letting them all go..." With such a poignant opening scenario Jenny Erpenbeck draws us immediately and deeply into a world
Those who. Then their friends. Those who remember. Who are afraid. And finally everyone. Everyone everyone.A skillfully woven, lyrical novel/poem with a bang. Not as good as Visitation, but similar in its sense of absence. The empty house in Visitation that gets populated with stories is here replaced with an empty child, naive, almost without words, who becomes a vessel through which careful repetition and ominous clues are dropped; the reader is very subtley nudged towards the crux of the
I really enjoyed Go, Went, Gone. The Book of Words is, I think, the author's first novel. It's a very short book, 90 pages, and, perhaps intentionally, it's difficult to get one's footing. Experimental in certain ways, it's set in an unnamed South American country, the narrator, a girl from childhood to age 17, is also unnamed, as is everyone else. The gist is how words lose their meaning when appropriated by brutal regimes. Everything is seen through the girl's eyes. By turns rather beautiful,
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