We save lives, says my father
We save lives, says my father, is the title of a book for young people by the Flemish author Do van Ranst . It was published by Carlsen-Verlag in 2006, translated by Andrea Kluitmann .
The book was published in 2004 under the title "Mijn vader zegt dat wij levens redden". In 2004 it won the literature prize of the city of Knokke-Heist in the category "Best Youth Book" and in 2007 the German Youth Literature Prize in the category "Youth Book / Critics Jury".
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The nameless first-person narrator lives with her parents and her aged grandmother in a house on a sharp bend, 1,500 meters from an unfinished half-bridge, "where everything ends", as her mother used to say. Again and again a car does not make the curve and races into the house. The parents of the narrating girl are constantly quarreling, the grandmother fell silent since the grandfather's death. The narrator's best friend is a lesbian and has a gecko and is also causing problems. The injured, who have accidents at their house, are cared for by the family, including Zack , a young man whom the narrator tries to seduce, also to find out his story and her sexual attitude.
Reviews
- Do van Ranst tells a tragicomic story laconically and with a lot of humor. The 48 short chapters appear to the reader as sketched, the individual scenes are often only sketched out. The first-person narrator sometimes even speaks directly to the reader, which makes him feel directly confronted with her world. With ... carefree she tells of the ... tragic events.
- ... a tragicomic story about growing up. About first sexual experiences, the search for closeness and love, his place in life, about unfulfilled longings ... A very empathetically told adolescent novel, original and authentic at the same time.
- From the jury's statement: ... Do van Ranst has succeeded in creating a captivatingly comical and original fable that is able to sketch out family secrets and compact stories of lies in an original way. His familiar experimental arrangement is a highly amusing and at the same time profound staging. She symbolizes not only the agony of growing up, but also the encapsulated passions of her pointedly drawn characters ...
Web links
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- ↑ lesebar.uni-koeln.de ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ We save lives, says my father. ( Memento from September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on the website of the Swiss Institute for Children's and Youth Media
- ↑ jugendliteratur.org
