Love in an emergency

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Love in an Emergency is a novel by the German author Daniela Krien , which waspublishedby Diogenes in February 2019 .

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In her book, the author describes the fates of five women, all in their mid-40s, who live in Leipzig . In the book, which is made up of five chapters, each of the women is dedicated to one of these chapters, which are also named after the first name of the treating woman. The narrative style is characterized by a realistic, clear and simple writing style that creates a kind of observer status for the reader. The East German origins are sometimes discussed in secondary characters, such as Malika's father and Jorinde.

The fates in detail:

Paula

Bookseller who was married to an architect named Ludger. Two daughters - Leni and Johanna - result from the marriage. Ludger, who appears very dominant and opinionated, is very fixated on the children. When Johanna dies of sudden infant death , Ludger blames his wife for it. These allegations are ultimately also the reason for the failure of the marriage. Ludger emigrated to Denmark for a while and met a new woman there. Paula also found a new life partner in Wenzel, to whom the woman died.

Judith

Judith and Paula have known each other since school and are still good friends. Judith is a doctor and very busy at work. Her defining hobbies are her horse and meeting men on appropriate online platforms . Through this platform she also meets the older and married judge Gregor, from whom she becomes pregnant . Without informing Gregor, she has the child aborted . Wenzel, Paula's partner, got to know Judith as a patient and was impressed by the intense love affair between him and his sick wife.

Brida

Is a writer and patient of Judith, who is also a kind of first-time proofreader of her books. Brida meets the owner Götz in an antique shop and falls in love with him. Götz is a trained carpenter and prepares old furniture for his business, for which he often travels to Eastern European countries to find suitable and inexpensive pieces of furniture. At the time they met, Götz was still in a relationship with another woman, but that didn't stop Brida from the relationship. Two children - Hermine and Undine - result from the relationship with Götz. Over time, Götz entered into another relationship with the younger Svenja. Brida tries to maintain the relationship anyway and to accept the open relationship with the new lover, which does not succeed in the long run.

Malika

Is Götz's partner before his relationship with Brida. Malika is a trained musician who works as a music teacher. Götz saw her for the first time in Judith's practice, where she is a patient. One day after the meeting in the doctor's waiting room, she saw Götz in the cinema and asked him about it. Malika is very hurt by the end of the relationship with Götz and has no plans to enter into a relationship with a man again.

Jorinde

Is the younger sister of Malika. Malika always felt disadvantaged by her parents compared to her younger sister, which put a strain on their relationship. Jorinde is an actress and initially lives in Berlin with her husband Torben , who is also an actor. The marriage has 2 children. While Jorinde's career is promising, there are no engagements with Torben, who shows little interest in his professional development. The parents, especially the father, are not very enthusiastic about Jorinde's husband because the political views also differ widely. The parents, who were more critical of the regime during the GDR era, now tend to be more right-wing extremists (especially the father) , while Torben in particular sympathizes with left-wing extremist views. When Jorinde becomes pregnant again, but the child is not from Torben, she wants a divorce . Torben is not particularly affected by this development, as he also started a relationship with a younger lover at the same time. In order to guarantee her professional obligations and the upbringing of her now 3 children, she asks her sister Malika for help. Both of them move into a shared apartment in Leipzig with the children. The father refuses to support him in looking for an apartment with a guarantee. The two children together spend every second weekend in Berlin with their father Torben and his girlfriend, although the children there are mostly left to their own devices. Nevertheless, Torben tries to maintain custody of the children, probably from the resulting financial advantages, and also refers to the main upbringing of the children by two women. The end of this custody dispute remains open in the novel, but Jorinde and Malika are optimistic about the decision.

reception

Commercial win

The novel is considered a literary surprise success of the year 2019 and could be one month after the publication on the bestseller list of the mirror position, which he led three times in July / August of the year; it is one of the 10 most successful literary books of 2019. The author's previous publications by Graf Verlag have received critical acclaim, but have not made it onto the bestseller list.

Contemporary criticism

Overall, the book received mostly positive ratings from literary critics . Burkhard Müller sees the five women's biographies in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as a sensitive, polyphonic female choir, which shows a panorama of social upheaval in a wonderfully light narrative. Müller does not see the men depicted one-dimensionally, whereas Carsten Otte speaks in the Tagesspiegel of a hymn of praise to matriarchy , in which masculinity is described as irresponsible and political clichés prevail. Nevertheless, he thinks his portrayal of the failure of classic relationship models and the search for new paths in life is definitely worth reading. For Ursula März in der Zeit , the contemporary problems of women in the modern age described are too fraught with feelings of guilt on the part of the protagonists . For Julia Schröder on Deutschlandfunk and for Anja Maier in taz , the author empathetically writes women in the post-patriarchal generation to make their own decisions about their fate in search of life satisfaction. In his review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Rainer Moritz is particularly impressed by the precise but rarely pathetic language of the novel and describes it as intelligently entertaining contemporary German literature.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Daniela Krien landed a surprise success in 2019. Book report , January 6, 2020, accessed on January 27, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Burkhard Müller : Paula, Judith, Brida, Malika, Jorinde. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 6, 2019, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Carsten Otte : Happiness is elsewhere. In: Der Tagesspiegel . March 12, 2019, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Ursula March : None without guilt. In: The time . March 20, 2019, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Julia Schröder: Someone always comes up short. Deutschlandfunk , June 5, 2019, accessed on February 3, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Anja Maier : Freedom can also be condensed feminine. In: The daily newspaper . June 1, 2019, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Rainer Moritz : A relationship box is still better than no relationship. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 7, 2019, accessed February 3, 2020 .