You don't know me!

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You don't know me! is a childhood novel by David Klass , published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States under the title You Don't Know Me . In the same year the German first edition in the translation by Alexandra Ernst followed at Arena Verlag and in 2009 the German paperback edition .

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The novel is about fourteen-year-old John, who lives with his mother without a father. For some time now, she has had a new boyfriend who has moved in with them. He doesn't seem to have a regular job, unlike John's mother, who works as a shift worker in a factory and earns the money she needs to live. There is a power struggle between the man and John. The man wants him to submit to him and does not shy away from physical abuse . The audible sign of this submission is that John calls him "Sir". This denotes him, no matter how much he is mistreated.

Next to his home, which he does not perceive as such, the school is a place of importance to him. Although he has only a few success stories and friends there, it is a shelter for him. This is also due to Gloria Porter, a girl of his year with whom he is in love. He has never spoken to her, but feels a quiet understanding between her and himself. He uses a slip of paper to invite her to attend the school team's basketball game, using the idea of ​​his best friend and competitor, Billy Beanman. But the hoped-for sign does not materialize. Gloria swallows the note and ignores John. The next day, before the class starts, she tries to talk to him, compliments him and accepts the invitation. From that moment on, John swims on a wave of happiness. He succeeds in everything both in class and in the orchestra rehearsal. He is admired by his classmates, especially Violet Hayes, a rather unattractive and boyish girl.

On the day of the basketball game, John almost doesn't recognize himself anymore when he makes his way to Gloria, who lives in the richest part of town. He even stole $ 20 from his mother's friend so that he could offer Gloria something that evening. Gloria's parents and their house make a huge impression on him. But above all Gloria in her provocative outfit not only attracts John's attention, but also her father's attention. The evening does not go as planned. The basketball game turns into a mass brawl before the whistle. John and Gloria avoid the hustle and bustle and meet Gloria's friend Mindy and her boyfriend on the way home. John learns from Mindy's friend Toby how brutal Gloria's father is with his daughter's male companions if he catches them together. Despite this warning and the alarm bell in his head, John lets Gloria lead him into her party room. Contrary to their assurances, her father discovers her and John can just escape through the cat hatch. But he had to leave all clothes, except for his trousers, including the jacket with the money.

This will be his undoing when he returns home. The man noticed the disappearance of the money. But instead of beating up John, he takes him on one of his fishing trips. It turns out that it's criminal activity that makes him a living. John finds himself at the mercy of him for the first time. He has to submit to him and calls him "Sir" for the first time. He works to the point of exhaustion and does not dare to oppose. But before they go home, the evening has one more surprise in store for John. The man tells him that his mother has gone to see her aunt because of an illness and that she will be his wife when she returns. John's resistance is broken. He doesn't even see a chance of betraying the man. He thinks he lost his mother.

When he goes back to school two days later, he has an awkward argument with Gloria, in which he realizes that she is not the girl he thought she was after all. But the chain of unfortunate events does not end there. He is so preoccupied with himself that, without noticing it, he expresses his thoughts aloud about his math teacher, which hurts her very much. He is taken out of the orchestra rehearsal, which is also disastrous, and taken to the director, who suspends him from classes for a week and places him in the care of his alleged father.

On the same day, the man begins to break down John for good. Back home, he beats the boy in the basement with his belt. John is just a whimpering bundle in the dirt. In the absence of his mother and also robbed of his school shelter, he is completely at the mercy of the man and his will. He toyed with the idea of ​​running away as well as killing himself, but neither did one nor the other because he would have left the field to the man without a fight and left the victory. In this situation, Violet Hayes unexpectedly visits him and tearfully asks him to accompany her to the school prom. After initial rigorous rejection, he gives in to Violet's tenacity. In his preparations for the evening, for which he no longer has any clothes, he realizes, however, that this visit and her spirit of contradiction aroused his resistance to the man and all adversities. Equipped with clothes from their brother, they spend an evening showing John what really matters in life. He falls in love with Violet and experiences his first kiss with her.

But John had not expected such difficulties as they expected him at home in the form of the man. This has been waiting for him and wants to beat him while drunk. But this time John defends himself. When John's dog bites the man's leg, the man is distracted for so long that John manages to escape from the house. There he is overtaken by the man and beaten up, but Mr. Steenwilly, a teacher of John's who has long suspected, is able to save John's life and hand the man, a wanted criminal, to the police.

At the hospital, John realizes that he was wrong not only about Violet, but above all about his mother. She didn't notice how John was suffering, but she always stood on her son's side. John was too influenced by the man instead of talking to her. Despite the life-threatening climax, the novel ends hopefully and promisingly with John's recovery and the certainty that he has not lost his mother and that he has found a real friend in Violet.

Narrative perspective

David Klass tells the story from the point of view of the main character John in a first person perspective . This results in the subjective representation and evaluation of the events by John. By using the "you" in the first sentence of the novel, the reader feels directly addressed and thus affected by the feelings that move John. In the course of the first chapter it becomes clear that John is addressing one person specifically, his mother. However, the conversation with her does not take place in real life, only in his thoughts. The author also shows this narrative situation in the fact that the mother, although John's interlocutor, is not even near him, but is the target of John's observation. But even that is not true. The observations that John makes are also of a purely intellectual nature, because, as he himself puts it, "you don't have to see things to know that they are happening."

In the course of the novel, John's contacts change. In chapters three and four, for example, his intellectual communication is directed to Mr Steenwilly. This is repeated several times later. In many places the context gives an indication of who John is addressing in his mind, but in just as many a reference person remains unclear at the level of the novel. See, for example, Chapter 17. At the beginning of the chapter, the language suggests that John is addressing his mother because he assumes that she will not miss him when he leaves her. This assumption is confirmed in lines 31 and 32 on page 174, because who but his mother could notice at home that he is still there. However, the moment the mother is disproved as the contact person, when John tells about the phone calls with her in the hospital at Aunt Rose's, because he is talking about her in the third person. The chapter then closes with a change to the second person. In these last lines the boy's desperation over the hopelessness of his situation and his silent cry for help from his mother, who cannot reach her, are concentrated.

It is precisely the immediacy of the thoughts, the reflections and assessments of his environment by John, in a sense a single inner monologue , on the one hand very much involve the reader, especially in those places where an addressee cannot be recognized on the narrative level, on the other hand, should be viewed with caution. The reader has to ask himself what is really true of what is being told. As the events unfold, it becomes clear to the reader that John's perception of his surroundings and what happened is often inconsistent with the reality of the novel. This discrepancy can be seen by the reader. A good example of this is the relationship with Gloria, John's lover. While the reader can classify her behavior towards John after handing over the slip of paper as negative and regards her acceptance the next morning with the necessary skepticism, such an attitude by Gloria is simply out of the question for John. He lets himself be charmed by her friendliness and believes her explanations, while the reader immediately identifies them as lies.

The story also draws part of its comedy from the contradiction between John's perception and fictional reality. Despite the difficult domestic situation and the abuse by his mother's boyfriend, John does not seem desperate, at least not as long as there is a kind of balance of power between him and the man. John's imagination in particular opens up a way for him to cope with this burden and not perish from it. The possibility to express one's situation and the behavior of one's counterpart in words and to preserve one's principles and thus one's dignity can only be experienced to that extent through the choice of the first-person perspective. So John manages his little escapes in math class as well as in confrontations with the man, be it that he calls Mrs. Gabriel, Mrs. Moon Face or Mrs. Garlic Breath or works out what she says “really”, be it that he does Man in thought, in a kind of deep or metacommunication, refusing the submission that this demands of him. The moment the two levels separate, disaster strikes John. When he has to help the man with his fishing trip to get him back the $ 20, John's desperate situation is revealed in the fact that he actually calls him "Sir". His thoughts no longer speak of rebellion, there is no more parallel intellectual communication, only the direct feeling, the fear, is expressed. Reality has arrived in his mind. A similar situation arises when John speaks out his thoughts about Mrs. Gabriel in math class. This is where the mental level breaks into reality. The disaster for John and his horror are immediately apparent to the reader. Through the first person perspective and the mediation of the outside world through his thoughts, John's emotional reality and the influence of the environment on it become very immediate for the reader, one of the difficulties and strengths of the novel.

Reviews

  • Reinhard Osteroth from the weekly newspaper Die Zeit praises the rhythm of the “non-parents' story” as “captivating” and the “enormous narrative originality” of the combination of school, love and crime stories.
  • Roswitha Budeus-Budde from the Süddeutsche Zeitung praises the “crazy language” and the German translation by Alexandra Ernst.
  • Simone Giesen from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung rates the story as conventional, but rates the "charming, funny and original observations" as positive.
  • The Lübecker Nachrichten rate the book for young people as “great literature and at the same time very heavy fare”.
  • English-language reviews were found in the New York Times , the Washington Post and the Lodi News-Sentinel , among others .

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ us.macmillan.com
  2. ↑ The summary of contents is based on the paperback edition from 2009.
  3. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 10, lines 25/26
  4. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 172, line 1
  5. ↑ David Klass, You don't know me , 2009, p. 179, line 1 - p. 181, line 6
  6. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 181, lines 7-14
  7. ↑ David Klass, You don't know me , 2009, p. 61, line 13 - p. 62, line 16
  8. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 75, lines 8 - 32
  9. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 7, lines 12-14
  10. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 12, lines 14-19
  11. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 46, lines 14-24
  12. ↑ David Klass, You Don't Know Me , 2009, p. 157, lines 15 - 31
  13. ↑ David Klass, You don't know me , 2009, p. 199, line 9 - p. 200, line 11
  14. ↑ a b c Perlentaucher: Overview of the reviews. Retrieved June 23, 2011 .
  15. ^ Lübecker Nachrichten on September 30, 2009: Strong and heavy literature. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 23, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ln-online.de  
  16. ^ The New York Times, September 16, 2001. Retrieved June 23, 2011 .
  17. ↑ The Washington Post on May 13, 2001. Retrieved June 23, 2011 (English).
  18. ^ Lodi News Sentinel on October 26, 2002. Retrieved June 23, 2011 .