Addicted to the storm
Addicted to the storm ( Crazy for the storm ) is a novel by Norman Ollestad , which was published in 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers in New York . The S. Fischer Verlag published the German edition one year later.
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In his homage to his fatally injured father, Norman Ollestad senior (* 1935), the son shared autobiographical information until 2006. The starting point of the memories is the crash of a Cessna 172 on February 19, 1979, in which the author - at the age of eleven - was the only one of four occupants to survive. The father wanted to take the son to ski training by plane. In addition to the pilot, Sandra, the 30-year-old friend of the father, was also sitting in the accident machine. The plane crashed on the 2650 meter high Ontario Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains .
In writing, the author wants to cope with the loss of his beloved father 27 years later. In 39 chapters, the two descriptions of the author's life-threatening descent from Ontario Peak alternate with the retrospectives of living together with the ambitious father. At the age of four, Norman Ollestad junior was forced to do a breakneck downhill run . Norman lived with his mother in the Topanga Beach nudist colony near Malibu . Even after the father separated from the mother, the grueling "training" continued. In addition to downhill skiing, surfing was on the agenda. The fear of death from the approaching breakers had to be overcome according to the rule of the upbringing maxim “never give up”.
In 2006 the author researched the protocols on the course of the accident in 1979. It turns out that the inexperienced pilot had flown recklessly into the cloud-covered mountains. With this, the author defuses a statute-barred assumption, according to which people from the retinue of the late J. Edgar Hoover are said to have avenged themselves against FBI practices for a book written by their father . Norman Ollestad senior had been an employee of the Federal Office and later left.
The book pays homage to the surfing-mad father in the sense that the author suffered as a child under his father's compulsion to do high-performance sports, but at the end of the novel he describes the upbringing of his six-year-old son Noah. The author gives the boy that great feeling of freedom that the late father had been addicted to for life: downhill skiing, which could be fatal but is luckily survived by Noah, is repeated three decades later in every detail.
Audio book
- Till Demtrøder reads Norman Ollestad: “Addicted to the storm”. Director: Brigitte Grafe. Argon-Verlag, Berlin 2010
literature
German-language edition used
- Norman Ollestad: Addicted to the storm. Novel. From the American by Brigitte Heinrich. Frankfurt am Main 2011 (Fischer Taschenbuch 18551), ISBN 978-3-596-18551-1
Web links
- Oliver Junge in the FAZ on February 26, 2010: "Ikarus von Topanga Beach"
In English with German subtitles
- The author of the book in a video with excerpts from a CBS interview of the little one in the face damaged Norman from February 20, 1979
In English
- The web presence for the book
- Brief description from Harper Collins
- Janet Maslin in the New York Times on June 10, 2009: "A Tale of Family Life, Laced With Thrill Seeking, Adrenaline and Ambivalence"
- Rachel Abramowitz in the Los Angeles Times on June 12, 2009: "Lessons Norman Ollestad's father taught him"
- Bill Gifford in the Washington Post June 14, 2009: "Making It Down Alone"
- Doug Gross, CNN June 30, 2009: "A deadly plane crash, an amazing adventure"