Rain novel

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Rain novel by Karen Duve published in 1999. The author was achieved with this novel a great success and it was quickly translated into several languages.

content

At the center of the plot are Martina, a beautiful young woman, and her husband Leon, a little talented would-be writer. Leon undertakes to write the biography of a gangster according to his specifications. The two use the advance payment for his commissioned work to move from Hamburg to a dilapidated house on the Mecklenburg flat land. Leon in particular expects literary inspiration from the rural surroundings, which are not very familiar to him. Martina has no recognizable plans, she follows her husband.

It rains from the beginning and won't stop as this narrative progresses. In the dilapidated garden the water soon no longer seeps away and trenches have to be dug. A veritable nudibranch plague pours over everything. The number of snails cannot be avoided despite great efforts. One after the other breaks in the house. Leon thinks he has to do the handicrafts himself. However, he is unable to do so, he worsens the state of decay and soon lies motionless, but moaning, on the living room sofa, even with severe back pain.

The mysterious closest neighbors Kay and Isadora, two sisters, live some distance away. One sister takes care of Leon's health, the other is more involved in the dog that ran into the family and to whom Martina's whole care and love has been given ever since. Both sisters are more or less in love with a spouse.

Leon's client urges him to get on with writing the biography and to finish it successfully. To put pressure on Leon, he and a friend from the same industry visit the young couple in the country. During this visit, Martina is brutally raped by one of the men, a scene that is portrayed with a certain degree of accuracy. At the same time, Leon is beaten up. The sisters appear as angels of revenge. The two gangsters are killed and the bodies are removed with the help of Martina.

Martina leaves Leon, who falls into madness. The house collapses, Leon gets lost in the moor and sinks.

Readings

On the surface, the story, told in detail, looks like any thriller or detective novel, even if the action mainly takes place in a lawless area. The deconstructed but reading reveals several further readings. The obvious violence, the found bog bodies, dead dogs, disgusting abominations of all kinds cannot cover up the sub-texts when reading close to the text. In addition to intertextual references to the Bible, such as the name of the dog Noah who ran into it, and the Ten Plagues of the Old Testament, there are references to the American sociolinguist Deborah Tannen , whose book You Just Can't Understand Me. Why men and women talking past each other lies in the back seat of Leon and Martina's car. Martina herself is actually called Roswitha, a name that her husband Leon does not like, but who was also the name of Hrotsvit , who was considered the first German poet to be .

Reviews

  • Peter Graves: Replanting the garden of the North . In: Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 8, 1999, No. 5036, pp. 7-8.
  • Florian Illies: Land Up, Land Down. Searing humor: Karen Duve's “Rain Novel”. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 29, 1999, accessed on February 12, 2017 .