The girl at the end of the street (novel)

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The girl at the end of the street (Original title: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane ) is a crime novel by Laird Koenig published in 1974 , which goes back to a previously written play by the same author.

action

First day of the plot - Halloween
October 31st: In a remote house on the outskirts of a village on Long Island , blonde, green-eyed and freckled Rynn Jacobs celebrates her 13th birthday alone in the living room. Frank Hallet, the landlord's son, appears with a Jack O'Lantern and is surprised that the young Englishwoman knows nothing about American Halloween customs. Her single father, the poet Leslie A. Jacobs, with whom she moved here a few months ago, is in the study and must not be disturbed. Frank Hallet, described as a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a red face typical for alcoholics, and an unsympathetic manner, tries to ensnare Rynn with clearly sexual flattery. When he finally grabs her bum, she reacts so angry that he leaves the house.

Second day of the action - Mrs. Hallet appears on
Friday, a few days later: When Rynn is in the process of learning Hebrew with the help of a record, the arrogant and snappy landlady appears, Mrs. Hallet. She tries to make it clear to the girl that she had nothing to say as a child and wants to discuss with the father why Rynn does not go to school. She'll take the case to the school board next week. Mr. Jacobs is with his publisher in New York City, said Rynn. Mrs. Hallet, who apparently knows her son's inclinations, tells Rynn not to let Frank into the house anymore. She wants to get jam jars from the cellar, but Rynn manages to keep her from entering the cellar with the promise to provide the jars herself within the next few days.

Third day of the action - Mario appears.
The Saturday after next: Rynn takes the bus to the small town and cashes travelers checks for cash at the bank. Then she learns at the town hall that the school committee won't meet for several weeks, so Mrs. Hallet lied. At home, the village policeman Ron Miglioriti knocks on the door to sell tickets for a charity raffle. Since he treats Rynn respectfully and kindly, he is sympathetic to him and she takes a certain trust in him. Miglioriti cautiously confirms that Frank Hallet has a preference for underage girls, but: "People who have been here on the island for three hundred years definitely don't do two things: They do not go to psychoanalysis or go to prison." Later, Mrs. Hallet and indulge in xenophobic and racist sayings, especially against Jews (an allusion to Rynn's Hebrew course) and Italians (an allusion to Ron Miglioriti). She wants to speak to Mr. Jacobs to negotiate a termination of the lease because she bluntly expresses her opinion that the Jacobs should get out of the village. Rynn claims that her father is in the study and under no circumstances should be disturbed there. When she threatens Mrs. Hallet to tell Frank's behavior to her father on Halloween and she mockingly taunts her son's sexual orientation, Rynn is slapped. Since Rynn has taken the jam jars from the cellar, but not the rubber rings that go with them, Mrs. Hallet wants to enter the cellar. This time, Rynn fails to stop them. Downstairs Mrs. Hallet utters a scream, the girl closes the hatch above her. While Mrs. Hallet is knocking desperately, Rynn decides that the landlady must not come out alive knowing what she has seen in the basement. She uses a rubber hose to feed gas from the stove into the cellar and goes for a walk. Later no more signs of life can be heard from below.

Rynn has to get Mrs. Hallet's car off the property. She calls the local workshop with the request that someone drive the car to the train station. With this assignment, a young boy dressed in a black cape, top hat and glued-on mustache appears: Mario Podesta, the 16-year-old son of the workshop owner. He appears as a magician on children's birthday parties and is dependent on a walking stick as a result of polio . Mario knows Mrs. Hallet's car and knows that something is wrong with it. In order to help Rynn (because the physically handicapped outsider “had never asked a girl for anything”) he doesn't drive the car to the train station, but in front of Mrs. Hallet's office. As a thank you, Rynn invites him to dinner. They begin to fall in love, but Rynn does not answer Mario's questions about the truth of the matter. Miglioriti, who is Mario's uncle, disturbs the two at dinner with the news that Mrs. Hallet has disappeared. Worried that Frank might have turned up, he checked to see if Rynn was alone. The two youngsters lie to the police officers that the father is present but has already lay down. - Miglioriti has barely left when Frank Hallet stands in front of the door and lets himself in without being asked. He brutally kills Rynn's white rat Gordon with a lit cigarette and humiliates the two youngsters. He wants to know if Rynn knows anything about his mother's disappearance, who wanted to come over to see her about the jam jars. Inside Mario's walking stick, as a magic utensil, there is a sword with which he succeeds in driving Hallet away.

Mario doesn't understand why Rynn refuses to report Frank Hallet to the police. So she takes him to the cellar and tells him the history. Her alcoholic mother beat her in England and was therefore thrown out by her father. When he knew he was terminally ill with stomach cancer, he moved Rynn to this remote house in the United States and prepared his highly intelligent daughter to grow up here secretly and alone without the tutelage of adults. He paid the rent for three years in advance and left enough money in the joint account for Rynn to withdraw with travelers checks. Mr. Jacobs threw himself into the sea at a time he had secretly calculated, so that the current washed his corpse into the ocean undetected. But Rynn's hated mother had found out her daughter's whereabouts and was at the door on October 17th to want to live here with Rynn. Rynn mixed the cyanide she had found in the house in the previous owner's photo lab with her mother's tea, deliberately killing her. According to instructions from a book, she doused the corpse with a certain chemical to preserve it and kept it in the basement, where Mrs. Hallet discovered it. - In the following week Mario visits Rynn secretly several times and tells her that the villagers generally suspect Frank Hallet of being responsible for his mother's disappearance.


Day four - Rynn and Mario Saturday, a week after Mrs. Hallet's death: Mario buries the two bodies in the garden while Rynn keeps watch and it starts to rain. Rynn lets the soaked Mario, who is already suffering from a cold, bathe and covers him with a blanket on the sofa. She lies down with him wearing only underwear. When their caresses go in an erotic direction, Mario gets up embarrassed and rides his bike home for dinner. Rynn asks him to come back after dinner. - Later Ron Miglioriti comes over for his usual Saturday night visit and tells Rynn to his face that he doesn't believe in her father's existence here in the house. She should finally tell him the truth. The obviously returned Mario appears on the stairs with a wig and glued-on beard and exchanges a few sentences with his uncle in a voice that is deep from the cold, so that he actually takes him for Mr. Jacobs. Then Mario Rynn confesses that he only goes along with everything because he loves her. Rynn asks Mario to be her boyfriend. In Rynn's bed, the 13-year-old and 16-year-old had their first sexual experiences of their lives.

Fifth day of the action - finale
Tuesday, three days later: Rynn is sad that Mario has not contacted us since the night of love together. Miglioriti appears and tells her that his nephew is in the hospital with dangerous pneumonia, where he is taking her. The policeman explains that he and Rynn saw each other for the last time. He can no longer stand the tyranny of the Hallet clan and will take up a new job in California. Now that he had met Rynn's father, he could leave her behind with peace of mind. Inwardly shocked at the loss of her protector, Rynn says goodbye to Ron Miglioriti with a warm hug. In the hospital room she meets Mario's sister and brother who tell her that he is over the hill and will probably get well again, only because of the medication he sleeps all the time. But she could wake him up and talk to him. However, she does not, but whispers to the sleeper that she loves him and quickly leaves the hospital so as not to run into the arms of the announced mother. - The next night Frank Hallet sneaks into the house with a cape, top hat and cane (so that possible witnesses can hold him for Mario) unnoticed and searches the basement, where he finds his mother's hair clip. He also found out that Mario had driven the car from Rynn's house to the office. Even Rynn, who surprises him, thinks he is relieved for Mario at first sight. Hallet offers her to be silent on everything if she gets involved in a sexual relationship with him. She pretends to agree to it, prepares two cups of tea and particularly noticeably asks Hallet to be the first to drink. To the sounds of Franz Liszt's First Piano Concerto, which is playing on the record player , he suspiciously takes Rynn's cup instead of his. The novel ends with Frank Hallet wondering about the strong almond aroma (the taste of cyanide) in tea and starting to cough.

Background and reception

At the insistence of the Parisian publishing house Hachette , which had already published in 1972 his novel Kinderstunde ( The Children Are Watching ) in French translation (Attention, les enfants regardent) , which he wrote together with Peter L. Dixon and was awarded the Grand prix de littérature policière , Laird Koenig reworked his previously unperformed play The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane into a novel. This was published almost simultaneously in 1974 in the English original language in New York and London and in French translation by Hachette (Paris) (La Petite Fille au bout du chemin) .

Koenig himself wrote the script for the film adaptation of the same name under Swiss director Nicolas Gessner with Jodie Foster in the title role. The shooting took place in late 1975. The plot of the film shows an essential difference compared to the original: While in the novel or play Rynn Jacobs is a three-time murderer, in the film adaptation all three deaths occur without her intention.

The novel has been translated into numerous languages. A first German edition appeared in 1975 under the title Das Kind am Ende der Straße . After the film adaptation began in Germany and Austria in April 1977, the title of the film The Girl at the End of the Street was usually adopted for other novels .

Laird Koenig's original drama version of the story has only been available in print in the English original language since 1997. In a German translation by Peter-Paul Zamek, the play saw the following performances, among others: Grenzlandtheater Aachen 1992/93, Landestheater Schwaben Memmingen 1993/94, Badische Landesbühne Bruchsal 1999/2000, Schauburg (Munich) 2002/03, Matchboxtheater Leverkusen 2006/07, Theater der Jugend (Vienna) 2008 (director: Thomas Birkmeir ).

Reviews

  • Reviews of the novel can be found in The Business Week , The Higginson Journal of Poetry, and British Book News , among others .
  • Helmut W. Banz designated in the time the novel as "fanciful encrypted puberty tales to defense (the outside world, the possessive claim of adults) and displacement (maternal relationship which, skeleton in the closet ')" and certified him a "subtle irony."
  • On the occasion of the performance by the Matchboxtheater Leverkusen in the 2006/07 season, the drama version was described by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger as a "black stage horror".

expenditure

English original language

Translations (selection)

German

  • The kid at the end of the street. Translated by Inge Wiskott.
  • The girl at the end of the street. Translated by Inge Wiskott.

French

  • La Petite Fille au bout du chemin.

Italian

  • Quella strana ragazza che abita in fondo al viale. Rizzoli, Milano 1977

Dutch

Swedish

  • Den lilla flickan i huset vid vägens slut. Wahlström, Stockholm 1975, ISBN 91-32-40984-2

Spanish

  • La niña de las tinieblas.

play

  • The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Dramatist's Play Service, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8222-1571-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Laird King: The girl at the end of the street. Translated by Inge Wiskott. Paperback edition. Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-10352-1 , p. 58.
  2. ↑ Laird King: The girl at the end of the street. Translated by Inge Wiskott. Paperback edition. Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-10352-1 , p. 96.
  3. ^ Grenzlandtheater Aachen: Schedules 1990 to 1999 ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed September 21, 2010.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.begrenzlandtheater.de
  4. ↑ Peter-Paul Zamek [and a.]: The girl at the end of the street. Program booklet. State Theater Schwaben, Memmingen 1993/94.
  5. ^ Carsten Ramm [and a.]: The girl at the end of the street. Program booklet. Badische Landesbühne, Bruchsal 1999/2000.
  6. ↑ Schauburg. The children's and youth theater of the state capital Munich: The girl at the end of the street ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed September 21, 2010.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schauburg.net
  7. ↑ Matchboxtheater: The girl at the end of the street  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed September 21, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.matchboxtheater.de  
  8. ↑ Living in style. The lifestyle magazine, February 1, 2008 accessed September 21, 2010.
  9. ^ The Business Week, No. 2312-2319 (1974), p. 103, accessed September 21, 2010.
  10. ^ The Higginson Journal of Poetry, No. 10 (1974), p. 26, accessed September 21, 2010.
  11. ^ British Book News 1974, p. 305 accessed September 21, 2010.
  12. ↑ Helmut W. Banz: FilmtipPrograms . In: Die Zeit , No. 17/1977.
  13. ↑ Anna Ostric: Schwarzer Bühnengrusel In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , September 23, 2006, accessed December 6, 2017.