Domestic (novel)

Inland is a novel by the American writer Téa Obendet published by Random House in August 2019 . Alternately told from the perspective of the Balkan immigrant Lurie Mattie and the white settler Nora Lark, the plot of Inland is set in the American west of the late 19th century. Domestic is the second book release by Obonna after her award-winning debut novel The Tiger's Wife in 2011.

content

Lurie, whose family name "Djurić" was unceremoniously anglicized during his immigration and converted into a first name, came to the United States as a six-year-old from the Ottoman Empire , where, after the death of his father who accompanied him, he was initially a grave robber and then a notorious thief Railway device. On his escape from the law, Lurie joins the US Camel Corps in Indianola, Texas , a unit of the United States Army equipped with camels . On the camel "Burke" Lurie travels many miles through the arid landscapes of the American Southwest.

While the narrated time of Lurie's story spans the period of his life, Nora's story spans roughly a day. She lives with her family in the inhospitable Arizona Territory . Nora is awaiting the return of her husband, the printer and publisher of a small local newspaper who left three days ago to replenish the family's water supplies. Her two older sons disappeared after an argument the night before. In addition, the community in which she lives with her family threatens to lose its status as a county seat under the pressure of a cattle baron , which could possibly force the family to venture into the unknown again.

In her mind, Nora keeps talking to her daughter Evelyn, who died early from heat stroke, and Lurie to the camel Burke, to whom he directs his story. As Elizabeth Lowry writes in her Guardian review, both of the main characters in the novel are on a "collision course" while swaying between reality and fantasy in this way .

criticism

The reviews of the novel collected on the Book Marks website - an American review aggregator for new publications in the field of literature - are almost exclusively positive. From a total of 38 recorded book reviews fell in September 2019, a month after the book, 24 in the category of "highly praised" (English. Rave ) and 11 more in the category of "positive" (English. Positive ).

Numerous reviewers highlight Ob Dreh's depiction of the aesthetically appealing and at the same time hostile nature. In her review for the New York Times , Chanelle Benz points out that the American Southwest landscape appears like a character in the novel. Benz continues: “Obreth's simple but rich language captures the beauty and sudden danger of the West and revels in it at the same time.” Ron Charles sums up in the Washington Post that the unsettling veil between fact and fantasy in Germany is not just a literary effect of Obreth's “great prose”, but rather “a striking illustration of the indefinite nature of life in this place shaped by brutal geography”.

A reinvention of the western novel genre is often attributed to Ob Dreh. Chanelle Benz writes that Inland contains the stoic-heroic heroes and the necessary brutal violence of the Western genre, “but”, Benz continues, “the decision to put an immigrant and a middle-aged woman at the center of [the book] , is a welcome departure. ”John Freeman of the Boston Globe concludes that Inland is a new take on the Western,“ somehow closer to the loneliness, despair and terror of early eyewitness accounts ”.

literature

expenditure

• Téa Obendet, Inland: a novel , New York: Random House, 2019, ISBN 978-0-8129-9286-1 (first edition)

Reviews (selection)

• Chanelle Benz: Téa Obrehen Reinvents the Western Novel - and Brings Camels , in: New York Times of August 12, 2019, last accessed on September 20, 2019.
• Ron Charles: Téa Obendet's 'Inland' is a magical Western you'll want to savor with a tall glass of water , in: Washington Post of August 12, 2019, last accessed on September 20, 2019.
• Lily Meyer: 'Inland' Creates A New Myth Of The Old West , in: NPR of August 15, 2019, last accessed September 20, 2019.

Web links

• Inland: a novel on the Random House website

Remarks

1. ↑ Elizabeth Lowry: Inland by Téa Obendet review - a spectacular reinvention of the western , in: The Guardian, August 7, 2019, last accessed September 20, 2019.
2. ↑ All Book Marks reviews for Inland by Téa Obendet , in: Book Marks, last accessed on September 21, 2019.
3. ^ "As it should be, the landscape of the West itself is a character, thrillingly rendered throughout. […] Obrt's simple but rich prose captures and luxurious in the West's beauty and sudden menace. ”Chanelle Benz, Téa Ob.15 Reinvents the Western Novel - and Brings Camels , in: New York Times of August 12, 2019.
4. ↑ "The unsettling haze between fact and fantasy in" domestic "is not just a literary effect of Obreht's gorgeous prose; it's an uncanny representation of the indeterminate nature of life in this place of brutal geography. "Ron Charles, Téa Obendet's 'Inland' is a magical Western you'll want to savor with a tall glass of water , in: Washington Post from 12. August 2019, last accessed on September 20, 2019.
5. ↑ "" Inland "has the stoic heroic characters and the requisite brutal violence of the Western genre, but the decision to place an immigrant and a middle-aged mother at its center is a welcome deviation.", Benz, Téa Obendet Reinvents the Western Novel
6. ↑ "[…] a rewriting of the Western that somehow comes closer to the loneliness, desperation and terror described in early accounts of that time.", John Freeman, Téa Obendet's 'Inland' a poetic journey into loneliness and the American West , in : The Boston Globe August 15, 2019, last accessed September 21, 2019.