For her debut novel Helene Bukowski lived allegedly several weeks in a hut in the province of Lower Saxony. A dog, a few peat bogs, an elderly lady. There was not much more there, she says. In her novel "Milchzähne" even the way out is cut off: Between a nameless river and a wall of smoke lives a girl named Skalde with his mother Edith. The bridge demolished the unknown long ago.
At that time there should have been a great misfortune. Fire, dust, nobody knows for sure. Deer are still fleeing from a wall of smoke. Skalde was born in a house between pines and brambles. The father is dead. Skald is not allowed to go further than the hedge. Why? The girl herself does not understand that. The rule gave her the mother. A danger should lurk there. The house is dark, the windows are glued to the newspaper. One thing is clear: if "they" come, says Edith, then "I'll pop them off".
The novel "Milchzähne" first hovers between Postapokalypse and Robinsonade. People become self-sufficient. Skalde cultivates vegetables, feeds rabbits behind the house. Skalde knows no time - only light and darkness. At first, the outside world seems to be lurking on the doorstep like a threat. But after a few pages it becomes clear that the real problems are inside. As Skalde loses the first milk tooth, the mood tilts. The subliminal fear turns into hate against the restrictive mother.
All reference points are missing
Bukowski works with plastic images, between which she (dreamlike) sequences mounted. The coat of the mother is as black as the rain barrel next to the house. Secretly, Skalde imagines again and again to kill the mother. "I want to take the mother's body, place it in the dusty sand and turn my lap around with the pick-up."
The common house with its darkened chambers gets a new dimension. Each item is draped like a still life: black dressers. Cupboards covered by linen towels. Even the mother is somehow part of the furniture. Edith spends the whole day on the sofa. Sleeps, reads, stares at the ceiling. The sofa is Edith's area, "the beige cover was scuffed off, as if a large animal had rubbed off on it". All around are plates of leftover food.
In this untidy and pre-marked environment, Skalde tries to find some sense. But every reference point is missing: The mother does not care about her. There are no contacts with the world on the other side of the river. In this extreme fixation of the figure on himself - the novel is written completely in first-person perspective - Bukowski creates an oppressive psychogram.
No liberation
"Milk Teeth" is an adult's book: A girl discovers his limited world between the food cellar and the blackberry hedges. Especially in the implementation and the linguistic poking beyond hedges and fog ("The forest behind it seemed like a backdrop.") History gets its special charm.
Already the setting reminds of seemingly escapistic novels like Marlen Haushofer's "The Wall": A woman is cut off from civilization, around her hut in the mountains suddenly a transparent wall runs. Even at Haushofer, the protagonist settles in the cramped desert, grows potatoes. The development of the main character goes in Bukowski, however, in a different direction. Skaldes movement radius increases. The loss of the milk teeth becomes the ego-realization.
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13.03.2019, 12:43 clock
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Helene Bukowski
Milk teeth: Roman
Publishing company:
blumenbar
Pages:
256
Price:
EUR 20,00
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A liberation is not that anyway. Bukowski cleverly plays with the (in) knowledge of the narrator. When Skalde loses her first tooth, he lies "like a pearl" in her hand: "The fact that a piece of my own body had solved so easily, was a monstrosity for me." Simple observations get something magical in this isolation. The "glaring brightness", the sudden blue sky after months of fog, becomes a threat: "I've never been so scared."
Some observations are not further resolved, in some places, the narrator even entangled in contradictions (where do the used plates around the sofa, if Edith supposedly never gets up or eats?). Some chapters are just half a page long, standing there like fragments of memory, without any context.
One could therefore accuse the novel that the thread sometimes tattered. However, it somehow fits in with the concept: the memories can only be reconstructed in parts and are an attempt at orientation, where the "world got out of joint".