The pharmacist (novel)

The pharmacist is a novel - bestseller by Ingrid Noll . It was first published in 1994 by Diogenes Verlag , Zurich , and has since been translated into several languages.

action

The novel is about the pharmacist Hella Moormann, who tells her life in the gynecological clinic in Heidelberg to her bed neighbor Rosemarie Hirte (main character in "The Rooster is Dead"):

Hella has a weakness for men with problems until she meets the young dentistry student Levin. The latter murdered his grandfather with poison that Hella had inherited from her grandfather in order to gain access to his property and his villa. However, his grandfather had previously changed the will so that he had to marry Hella within six months in order for her to receive the inheritance. Soon Levin is cheating on Hella with the housekeeper Margot, who had already worked for the grandfather. In addition, Dieter, Margot's husband, now also lives in the villa.

Due to a mixture of accident and reflex, Margot falls out of the window while cleaning with Hella and dies shortly afterwards. Hella tries to save the adversary, but is disgusted by the intense smell of sweat and then loosens her grip. Since Levin leaves Hella alone longer and longer, she cheats on him with Dieter, despite his criminal past with assault and drug trafficking. When she suddenly becomes pregnant, she doesn't know who the father is. The situation gets out of hand: First Dieter Levin attacks and knocks out a few teeth, then he also attacks Hella, who can just be saved by Pawel. Pawel is a Hella customer who has two children and a mentally ill woman. When Dieter has to go to prison for the attack, Pawel moves in with the children at Hella. After learning about the relationship between Hella and Pawel, his wife Alma tries to commit suicide. The villa burns down.

Two years later, Hella and Pawel are living in a new house and are expecting their second child. Alma, who has now been released from the institution, turns out to be a real block on the family's leg, so that Hella already makes the decision that Alma now has to go.

At the end of the book, the good bed neighbor Rosemarie Hella suggests killing Alma in a similar way to her grandfather.

filming

In 1997, the novel by Rainer Kaufmann was made into a film with Katja Riemann under the title Die Apothekerin .