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Elke Heidenreich, author and critic:
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Here I am again with new neat books for cultivated entertainment. I was really sick. I was so sick that I couldn't even read. That's saying something to me. But before and afterwards on the road to recovery, I read two books that have it all. Actually, books that you shouldn't read if you're already weak. Both are about toxic families. This is a topic that always interests and drives me. Parents are not to blame for everything, but they, of course, lay a foundation. And what we do with our lives depends on how much strength we have left to make something of it when the hurts and ravages of childhood are so deep. They are two autobiographical novels, one more disguised as a novel, the other clearly autobiographical. And both have it all, because both tell of these horrific injuries, which, where it was almost a matter of life and death, that almost cost the authors their lives. The first Sarah Jollien-Fardel »Favorite Daughter«, a novel published by »Aufbau«. Sarah Jollien-Fardel is a Welsh woman. She was born in 1971, in a small Welsh village, and she has admitted that this book has strong autobiographical traits, but it is still fiction. She imagines the main character in whom we can recognize her - this is little Jeanne. The father, the mother, Jeanne and her little sister live in this Welsh village, and the father is violent, the mother completely frightened. The father beats all three women. When he takes a knife in the evening to cut off the cheese for his dinner, everyone is already shaking and the children disappear under the table. He beats his mother anyway, she doesn't have the courage to separate from him, because you just don't do that in these circles and in these villages. The little daughter is his favorite daughter, but gets beaten endlessly. Later we learn that he also abused her for years, she takes her own life at some point. And Jeanne is the only one who is proud, who resists him, who never cries and he beats her once so that even the village doctor has to come. And even this doctor is silent, the whole village is silent. Everyone knows how violent this father is. Everyone is silent. Years later, the author had the courage to write down this story. She says it has a lot to do with me, but it's not exactly my life. It is shocking how all this pain has turned into good, very, very touching literature. And it's a book that might not have been possible without the whole MeToo debate. Women would simply be bolder now to talk about what men are doing to them. This is also the case in this case. And from a terrible experience, a great book has been created here through linguistic precision. She also describes how Jeanne is trying to start a new life. Of course, first of all she is only looking for the love of women, because she is really fed up with men. Then a man comes into her life and then she has to decide - How do I actually want to live? Eternally in fear? Or do I put that behind me for a moment? Great book: Sarah Jollien-Fardel, »Lieblingstochter« (»Favorite Daughter«) published by »Aufbau«. And the second, this is perhaps a thing. Matt Roland Hill, »Original Sin« published by »Kein&Aber«. That's how blatant I have drug addiction with all its horrorsN Never read and never seen described. The first sentence reads: "Is there anything better than the sight of a clean injection set fresh from the pharmacy in the morning?" Zack, there we have the whole thing. The author spares himself and us nothing. Crash, crime, misery, delusion, lies, decay. The whole arsenal. What happened? The author comes from a very, very pious family. His father is an evangelical Baptist pastor and preaches love in the pulpit. He hates his wife, he hates his children at home only hatred and lies. And all this mendacious piety, this whole false religiosity drives the son, who at the beginning does everything well, to church every Sunday, at some point goes into drugs. He can only endure all this in a state of intoxication. How he then describes it, how he crashes, how it goes worse and worse downhill with him, more and more irresponsible. That's astonishing, because if you're so deeply involved in drugs that you can still see and observe everything so clearly, that's a great thing the way he describes it. What's beeping and scratching in the background is my little dog, we just have to live with that. Someone who reads always has a dog somewhere that reads along. Yes, so this book is exhausting to read, it demands something. It is a spiral of trauma, chaos and darkness. He has overcome the darkness, the author, he is clean now. Who knows for how long. Whether it will remain eternal, it will come out of these pains of his childhood. And original sin, what is original sin? There is no such thing as original sin. We are all dealing with parents who do something to us. Good or not so good. And we have to take our lives into our own hands and make something out of it ourselves. It is worth reading this book because it shows that even in the hopeless, a beginning at the end under certain circumstances, if you have the strength to do so, can be good. I recommend these two books to you, although both are heavy fare and not easy to read. But they're both magnificently written. Pain became literature. And next time, when it's really spring and summer, we'll do something nice again, won't we? Something beautiful. See you then."