The rare gift

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The rare gift is a youth novel by Andreas Eschbach . The novel was published by Arena in January 2004 . The book is about the young Frenchman Armand, who has telekinetic skills and meets Marie of the same age on his escape from the French secret service. The novel was awarded the Read Peter Award in February 2006 .

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The boy Armand Duprée is a telekinetic whose gift has been trained since childhood so that it can later be used in the military. When Armand realized this at the age of 17, he escaped from the research center in France, where he had lived since childhood, across the German border. On his escape he hides in the house of the same age Marie, whose parents are on a two-week trip to the Caribbean. He steals Marie's household money and forces her to accompany him to the police as a hostage. He demonstrates his ability by bursting a vase. With the threat of being able to do the same with Marie's head, she surrenders to her fate.

Only on foot from the cordoned-off area and later by bus, they first flee from the unspecified Swabian town in the direction of Stuttgart. During the escape, Armand tells that he has to be especially careful of a boy named Pierre, because he comes from the same institute and is his ability to read minds. When they arrive in Stuttgart, they promptly meet Pierre. When their eyes cross for a split second, Armand reacts. Before Pierre can betray him, he squeezes his artery, which immediately knocks him out.

On the further escape, Marie and Armand get to know each other and Marie has to admit that Armand, despite his telekinetic powers, is a completely normal boy who she even likes and at the same time feels sorry for. When they reach the train station, they buy two tickets to Dresden with the last of Marie's money. Shortly before they can get on the train, they are discovered by the police. By the same method with which Pierre is eliminated, they also escape this situation and with a different train than planned, both leave the station. Although Marie could easily have left Armand during the escape from the police, she stays with him, which surprises Armand. In the late evening they manage to catch the express train to Dresden through a detour via a disused secondary station, where Armand stops it on the open route with his telekinesis. During the investigation of this incident, the two are discovered by a train attendant. Believing that he has two passengers disembarking in front of him, he orders them to board the train, indicating that this is not yet a regular disembarkation.

After a few hours of driving, they are surprised in the compartment by Julien, a security guard from the institute. When Marie and Armand fell asleep, Julien Armand injected a liquid called antipsych, which temporarily switched off his abilities. Marie wakes up and tries to free Armand. With the last of his strength, Armand manages to open a train door using telekinesis, and together they push Julien out of the moving train. The open door triggers an alarm in the train and the train slows down. Since the two of them are now forced to flee from the train crew, Marie applies the emergency brake and before the train comes to a standstill, they jump out of the door.

During the night the two run away together, are followed by search dogs and a helicopter, but can hide undetected in a bush. When it rains later, they find an abandoned allotment house that has been uninhabited for years and decide to spend the night there.

The next morning Marie is woken up by loud noises when several men are about to overpower Armand. Because Marie and Armand are barely discovered in the same bed, the commander of the alleged secret service group asks them whether they have slept together, because Armand's ability could be inherited in Marie's possible pregnancy. Marie replies that it is none of his business. Both are driven away in the same car and learn that the telepath could read Pierre Marie's mind and that she thought of Armand on the march to the hut. The secret service agents try to sow discord between the two young people. They claim that Marie used her cell phone on purpose to draw the persecutors' attention to her. Both realize that an attempt should be made to destroy the budding relationship between the two in order to persuade Armand to voluntarily return to the institute, since his renewed escape is in sight. In the car, Marie manages to pour her perfume bottle into the face of the guard next to her. When he can no longer pay attention to Armand because of the pain, the latter uses the moment to jump out of the car and dive into the crowd.

Because Marie is no longer of any use, cannot be detained for no reason, and would not pose any danger, as one would not believe her story anyway, she is later brought to the station by a MAD employee and is allowed to take the train home. After a year, Marie got a call from Armand during class, thanking her for helping him escape. He tells her that he is hiding in another country where he has found work and can live safely.

After passing the Abitur and driving license exams, she follows Armand to this country to live with him.

construction

The novel is written from the perspective of Marie, the 17-year-old protagonist of the novel. Eschbach writes the novel in first-person form, in which he lets Marie report on her experiences together with Armand. The events stretch over the period of an afternoon, starting when Marie rides a bike home from a school friend and spots police on every corner along the way. The novel ends the next noon, after Armand fled and Marie was then driven home.

review

The novel received positive reviews. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which the Frenchman Armand's otherness is dealt with. Told from Marie's point of view, the reader should feel for her at the beginning and also be afraid of Armand's powers, which he demonstrated several times. So he lets a standing vase with an announcement shatter and claims that he could do the same with Marie's head. At the time she was still writing about herself as a hostage, but later no longer used the term. In the course of the plot, Marie comes to terms with Armand's abilities and begins to accept him as a normal person. Even when in the end an attempt is made to turn both of them against each other, she takes his side and even helps him to escape.

In a review of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Elena Geus wrote that the novel was "perfect in its dramaturgy and told quickly", but also that "the moral dimension in his novel is a little too big". It is criticized that the idea of ​​using people with a special gift for military purposes is not given enough space for the discussion about the dehumanization of Armand. Also, the end is said to be too abrupt. According to Geus, it seems as if Eschbach "ran out of breath at his own pace".

The novel was awarded the Peter February readout in 2006.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reviews on Buchwurm.info
  2. ↑ a b Review of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from April 23, 2004