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Die Frequenzen

Roman

By Clemens J. Setz

(1)

| Others | 9783442741113

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1 Review

Just pages into this immense black-hole of a novel, and you can tell a wickedly talented writer is at work. His descriptions of a lone young man returning home on an uneventful train ride, as ordinary as it sounds, can be so distinctly detached, strange and foreboding. And it's all but a very modest ... (continue)

Just pages into this immense black-hole of a novel, and you can tell a wickedly talented writer is at work. His descriptions of a lone young man returning home on an uneventful train ride, as ordinary as it sounds, can be so distinctly detached, strange and foreboding. And it's all but a very modest appetizer that barely prepares the reader for what's to come in the following 700 pages.
Attempts to explain the story will be futile because the author's utter disregard for conventional storytelling denies the reader any logical pattern or sensible overview of a plot. We get to experience multiple narrative lines from multiple point of views, in the first person or in the third person, from the distant past or the month before, by a Japanese caretaker, her comatose patient or a red-furred female dog. By the middle of this book, you'd think the author has set out to write a book using every angle, perspective and writing trick imaginable. While all this fireworks of changing styles feel fascinating and intensely creative at first, the book overstays its welcome and turns into ever weirder corners of inexplicable sequences that may or may not be dreams, fears or flashbacks. The fact that more and more is told but less and less is understood quickly exhausts the mind and spoils the fun. By the last 100 pages, where one more or less just gives up and succumbs to the craziness of it all, the story can't end soon enough.
Which is a shame, really, considering how promising the first 200 or so pages are. Vivid characters, claustrophobic circumstances, erotic side stories and the brilliant sense of style on display leave one breathless, on edge and mystified at once. Especially the sometimes improbable story line and the very strange tone of it make the reading a deeply disturbing experience.
Sadly, all that good will gets squandered in the later parts of the book, where a little discipline is badly needed. In all, a bold work of fiction with lots of good ideas (the abundant and conflicting lives of the characters as different frequencies in the air) and creative writing (Uljana the dog's monologue or the phone conversation with a coma patient) but painfully lacking in self-control and a sense of direction.

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Tony Su said on Jul 28, 2011 | Add your feedback