It looks different inside
Inside it looks different is a youth book by Christine Biernath published by Gabriel Verlag in 2005 , which deals with the topics of loss, depression, self-harm and suicide among young people. The book was nominated for the Buxtehude Bull in 2006.
content
Svenja, the protagonist of the story, comes from a middle-class family and lives with her parents and her little sister Katarina, whom she calls Katinka. When she falls in love with a homeless punk named Mike, her parents aren't thrilled. Her parents are rather strict, but in some situations she manages to find the space to be alone with Mike.
By chance, the parents discover the secret meeting between Svenja and Mike, who then set stricter rules and send Svenja to her grandparents who run a farm as punishment with her little sister during the holidays. She is stubborn and doesn't want to talk to anyone anymore - not even with her sister, who she told her parents about.
She writes everything in a diary that her grandparents gave her. It is supposed to get worse: When Katinka persuades Svenja to go swimming in a nearby lake, something terrible happens: Katinka drowns in front of Svenja's eyes. The latter cannot deal with this loss and has since tried to isolate itself from the public. Her school grades deteriorate, and she has no more contact with her best friend Rike. Then her class gets a new classmate named Oliver, who sits next to her and doesn't want to leave her alone. At some point Svenja gives in and the two get along better and better. She also has no contact with Mike, who is now a drug addict , even though she looked for him often and very intensively. Her parents aren't really interested in Svenja or in each other. At some point Svenja can no longer take it and tries to kill herself with the help of her mother's sleeping pills that she had secretly taken with her.
Eventually, however, everything turns out for the better. Rike came to visit her in the hospital and the two get along just as well as before. Oliver and Svenja feel a little more than friendship and their parents are behaving normally again and want to see a family therapist. Svenja is now looking forward to her future life, even if it will not always be easy. But she knows she can do it.
style
The style is reproduced from Svenja's point of view. At times the story is also told in the form of diary entries . The writing style can partly be compared with the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . This novel is written from the perspective of Werther, who reports to his friend Wilhelm Briefe about his experiences in Wahlheim.