The Friday after the Friday after the Sunday
The Friday after Friday after Sunday is a novel by Clare Sambrook about the disappearance of a child without a trace and the consequences of this event for the family.
The novel was published in English in 2005 under the title Hide & Seek by Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh . The translation into German by Anna Radermacher came out in 2007 with the ISBN 9783499240898 in Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag ; the second edition of this edition was published in November 2011. An audio book with Dieter Gring as the narrator was published by Lagato with the ISBN 9783938956113 .
content
On a school trip from London to Legoland , the children are exceptionally not accompanied by the dutiful but hated director, but by the funniest teacher at Mandela School, “who was so relaxed that he didn't bother counting on the bus. “Promptly a student gets lost before going home. The fact that the child is not on the bus is only noticed after the vehicle has driven several kilometers. Panic breaks out until it is found that the boy was picked up by his aunt, who lives near the amusement park. Relieved, the teacher then allows the students to take another short break at a rest stop. It is only on arrival in London that it is noticed that five-year-old Daniel Pickles has apparently not got back on the bus after this stay. His older brother Harry, a little over nine years old, from whose perspective the events are being told, is already beginning to feel guilty when he drives back to the rest stop with his father in search of Daniel and is later questioned by the police. In the following weeks and months, in which his parents threatened to break due to the loss of Daniel and hardly notice Harry's needs, his situation worsened. Only the newly married uncle Otis, a black firefighter, is of some help to him, but he cannot be constantly present.
Eventually, the parents split up for some time. Harry stays behind with his mother, who can no longer cope with everyday life. Still driven by feelings of guilt, he comes under the influence of a neglected classmate who lives out his fantasies of violence by sending Harry on a revenge campaign against adults who are supposed to be guilty of the loss of Daniel. It is only by chance that two men are not harmed - Harry fails to lock the gardener of his school friend's family in a shed and set it on fire, and when he is out with a knife during the Notting Hill Carnival to attack a man who resembles the bus driver, fortunately an adult intervenes and prevents the attack.
The mother, who shocked her son by saying that Harry alone was not enough, also commits a criminal act: One day Harry has to discover that the small family has grown again with a child. He calls the baby, who according to his mother must remain a secret, "Little Boy". However, when he has to take care of the crying child because his mother has passed out under the influence of a cocktail of drugs and takes off his diaper, he finds that the baby has no penis. Otis, who has arrived at the family's accommodation with the emergency services, is finally able to convince Harry that "Little Boy" has not, as Harry initially assumed, has been robbed of this part of the body by an unknown person and is not his younger sibling either a little girl kidnapped by Mrs. Pickles who must be returned to her birth parents. Mrs. Pickles is admitted to a clinic, survives the poisoning and receives psychiatric treatment. Much later, she can be released and live with her firstborn again. The therapy has stabilized her to such an extent that she can cope with everyday life. Harry has now learned from his aunt Joan, Otis' wife, that he is not the only person suffering from the loss of someone else: “Anywhere in the world? Was that true? In Italy and Japan and Pakistan and Wakkatoo, all over the world, guys like me looking for the Daniel they lost? Did you see him and didn't you see him? That helped a little, I didn't feel so alone anymore. More like one of many Spurs fans. Or like eating fish at the same time as Sol . Or like I'm a boxer. Me, Otis, Pa and Muhammad Ali . "
The family never hears from Daniel again.
Reviews
In a review in the New York Times , Terence Rafferty focused on the perspective from which the events are told, and praised Sambrook's lack of cheap gimmickry. He wasn't entirely satisfied with the end of the novel: “ HIDE & SEEK makes a slight swerve toward the blandly therapeutic at the end, and that's disappointing, but until then Sambrook keeps the tone of her sad story light and dry and unsentimental, and her delight in Harry's exuberantly selfish voice seems genuine. ”Among other things, Natasha Tripney criticized the fact that Sambrook's portrayal of living conditions in the upscale London residential area Holland Park was unrealistic, and saw no deeper meaning in the introduction of the character Biffo. Biffo is initially a fantasy figure of Daniel, an invisible friend and companion who is tolerated in the family with a shrug of the shoulders, like the little boy's repeated desire for a television that his parents apparently do not want to buy on principle. After Daniel disappears, Harry begins to hear Biffo's comments and advice and to answer him. Tripney could only imagine that this motif would be used in the novel to depict Harry's turning away from reality under the influence of his emotional uncertainty, and stated: "[...] it doesn't really work." Marc Haddon said so Tripney, better mastered a similar subject in his Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time .
For Dietmar Hefendehl, The Friday after the Friday after Sunday is “simply a brilliant novel”: “We see the world from the perspective of a child in a state of shock and feel the shock ourselves. The novel is sometimes incredibly sad [...] You want to know what happens next, you suffer and the author doesn't leave you alone with the pain, deeply sad passages are followed by highly comical episodes. ”Manfred Orlick also highlights the two sides of the The story emerges: "The author succeeded in telling the difficult subject of the disappearance of a child in an extremely readable story," he writes. In a moving point of view ”she describes“ how the parents lose all sense of reality in their hopeless grief and do not notice how their other child is becoming more and more estranged from them. ”The children's perspective from which the story is told allows an unbelievable tension to build up between constant fear and hope. "Despite this horrible, even deadly sad incident", the work is also "life-affirming", it has "humorous passages and a wonderful ending."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Audiobook
- ↑ The Friday after the Friday after Friday , p. 9
- ^ The Friday after the Friday after Sunday , p. 246
- ^ Terence Rafferty's review in the New York Times
- ↑ Natasha Tripney at www.readysteadybook.com
- ↑ Dietmar Hefendehl at www.wissen.de
- ↑ Manfred Orlick on www.buchinformationen.de