Grundlsee (novel)

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Grundlsee is a family novel by the Austrian writer Gustav Ernst from 2013 . The first edition was published by Haymon Verlag .

action

The three children John, Bella and Lili spend a wonderful summer with their parents at the Grundlsee every year . The usual difficulties of everyday life and minor disputes are the order of the day. After this scene is a cut: Now about ten years have passed, the couple spends the summer without children at the Grundlsee for the first time. The thoughts are still with the children, as they seldom call from the parents' point of view. Although the family has always worked well, this community is gradually falling apart without any quarrels. However, you don't take the time to communicate with each other. The chapters bring a leap in time with them again and again. The children gradually move abroad. John moves to The Hague , Lilli moves to Brussels , and Bella, who has stayed in Vienna the longest , eventually moves to Baltimore in the United States as a doctor . The family hardly ever sees each other, something else is always more important than a family get-together or even just a phone call. When their father dies in a plane crash in Asia, the children realize how quickly it can be too late. Years later, at the sparse meetings, they discover that the time at Grundlsee is the most beautiful childhood memories. By this point they are well into their middle years. However, they too gradually die relatively early: John dies swimming in the sea and Lilli is murdered in a robbery in Paraguay . The last daughter who is still alive finally sums up: ?? The Grundlsee is my largest grave. ?? She too dies relatively early from breast cancer . In the credits, John's daughter goes looking for the house on the Grundlsee.

The novel is consistently told in the first person from the father's point of view over several generations. The father followed the events in his family for a few more decades, also from the beyond, before things slowly burst like soap bubbles before his eyes.

Reviews

Sebastian Fasthuber reviewed the novel in the Austrian weekly newspaper Falter on March 13, 2013 and came to the conclusion that Gustav Ernst, who is known for his stories of brutality and cruelty in families, shows a completely different side in this novel. The novel is sensitive. The review also includes a statement by Gustav Ernst on his 60th birthday. He said that if you get mild while writing, it's over.

According to Martin Kubaczek , who reviewed the novel for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , the dialogues and sentences are kept very short but also concise. This puts the loss in the foreground, while the other things are mentioned in the background.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Falter review
  2. ↑ Gustav Ernst: Grundlsee . 1st edition. Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck 2013, ISBN 978-3-7099-7045-4 .
  3. ↑ Pearl divers