Lap prayers
Lap prayers is the second novel by Charlotte Roche after Wetlands . It was published on August 10, 2011 by Piper Verlag and, if one follows newspaper interviews, it is partly autobiographical . A woman describes three days from her life and her thoughts on family relationships, friends and fears. The book sold over a million copies by March 2013.
action
The novel begins in the present with a detailed description of a sex scene between the narrator Elizabeth Kiehl and her husband Georg. She works as a photographer and he as a gallery owner. Both got to know each other in a professional context during their pregnancy and that of his partner. After the children were born, the couples separated for various reasons, and Elizabeth married Georg. Elizabeth had lost her three brothers in a car accident eight years earlier while they were on their way to Elizabeth's wedding. Because of the accident, the wedding was canceled; Elizabeth has since been traumatized and is receiving psychotherapy.
“A turning point in life of unimaginable horror, accompanied by feelings of guilt. 'This story', as the novel says, 'ruined my whole life'. And: 'My husband married a mess.' The story of the accident is placed in the middle of the novel; it thus provides explanatory models for the preceding and the following. The supposedly pornographic and scandalous novel suddenly takes on a different color: it becomes a pathological story. Also because the heroine and author always move in unprotected public space. Of course they are not one and the same person, but they walk hand in hand on this tightrope. "
During the three days described in the novel, Elizabeth recounts her visits to the therapist, her relationship with her daughter, father and mother, and other events in her life. She describes herself as controlled, constantly lying in wait and prepared for the worst. She can only let go during sex. Her big goal is to stay with her husband and be a better mother to her daughter than her mother was to her.
reception
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung notes the “manic character” of the protagonist Elizabeth Kiehl, who “mentally tears herself up [...] to be the best wife, the best mother and the best patient for her therapist [...] and a life without relaxation [leads] ”, since Kiehl, like Roche, has to deal with the“ inconsolable truth of the author ”that her siblings died in an accident:“ The real event gives the novel an urgency and force that cannot be avoided ”. The novel was positively rated as "more complex, mature, and sophisticated than the debut Wetlands ".
Der Spiegel also notes strong parallels between Kiehl and Roche (“offensively congruent with himself”), but expresses itself more critically: It is the author's “clumsy attempt at self-therapy” that isaccusedof narcissism : This is annoying because the protagonist Elizabeth despite “All out-of-the-way sexual practices” function as a universal figure, “as a clever gambler who struggles through a wide variety of ideologies, lifestyles and self-examinations” and like many women in their mid-30s have to choose between spirit and instinct. The magazine praises the "great achievement by Roche that it does not even try to give answers to such questions."
The Süddeutsche Zeitung criticized that the novel “suffered from the consequent confusion of the relationship between author and narrator” and lived “on the lie of saving sexuality”. Roche is accused of using "the inability to express itself appropriately linguistically [...] as a means of literary self-presentation", and the book is panned as "insignificant, trivial, even lying".
There was a strong polarization in the reader reviews; often the best or the worst rating was given.
Lap prayers immediately took first place on the bestseller lists; the initial print run (half a million copies) was sold out within a few days.
filming
The book was filmed in 2013 by Sönke Wortmann with Lavinia Wilson and Jürgen Vogel ; The cinema release in Germany was on September 18, 2014.
- Lap prayers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Web links
- Reviews at Perlentaucher
- Review on FAZ
- Review on sueddeutsche.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Charlotte Roche's novel “Lap Prayers” is made into a film. rp-online.de
- ↑ Lother Schröder, Rheinische Post from August 10, 2011, page A7 ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Everyone come to me on the couch , faz.net
- ^ Ratio and Fellatio , spiegel.de
- ↑ Mendacity between the legs , sueddeutsche.de
- ↑ a b Charlotte Roche storms the bestseller list , stern.de
