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 3/10 Fair --- lovegermanbooks.blogspot.com http://lovegermanbooks.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 --- 87 days ago http://lovegermanbooks.blogspot.com/2008/04/boy-with-robbers-hands.html
| I finished it a couple of days ago - Finn-Ole Heinrich's Räuberhände . It's the story of two boys - one has the perfect parents to the point of cliché, the other has an alcoholic mother who drinks outside the supermarket. They're best friends from the age of about 13 or so, and Samuel practically moves in with Janik and his parents. The narrator is Janik, just after the two have finished school and head off to Turkey in an illusory attempt to find Samuel's Turkish father - whose name he doesn't know. But before they left, Janik had overstepped a line and their friendship is now on the brink of collapse. So the story takes place on all sorts of time levels. The most obvious is the tiny snippets of future at the beginning of each chapter - so you read with a permanent sense of slight foreboding, not knowing quite what's going to happen. But you're also regaled with tales from happier times - psychological tricks played on the perfect parents, a Kleingarten paradise, young love, how the two boys became friends. And then there's Istanbul, where the two of them chase Samuel's unknown father at a whirlwind pace - all heat, dust, sweat and resentment at fever pitch. And the structure works incredibly well, keeping up the pace so you're always on your toes but never irritated. The critics have praised the film-like descriptions - which is a bit obvious really, seeing as the author is studying film - or at least he is when he's not w ... |
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