Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck

Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Fiction, romance... historical allegory !?

Copyright 2023

Started and still reading, October 2024

Rated so far,  6/10: read to pass the time.

Then re-rated to 4/10: bad but could be read.

Could be read because the writing style is simple. Though for various reasons, difficult to understand. Perhaps like, Dick and Jane analyse Shakespeare.

20oct24:

Here is a very quick opinion:

The cover says that this is a book of love and betrayal.

So far I've read maybe a third. The love is fun though weird.

And yet... *if* the betrayal is disappointing... or as bleeding obvious as my current guess: then the book is a waste of time, which I will never finish.

For now, I read and review. I hope add a footnote when I know more.

So.

The book reads like a poem, or a dream. This suits my mood, I am reading while half asleep. So far, I'm enjoying the book.

Yet it is confusing. He did, she did, sometimes hard to follow... yet interesting and enjoyable.

Then there are the assumptions of knowledge.

I suspect that characters may be involved in dangerous, revolutionary organisations... but I'm not sure. I just do not have the background knowledge which is assumed by the author.

Then I realise a bigger problem:

This book is written for, or at least about, intelligentsia living in Germany between WW2 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Very difficult for an Aussie to *identify* with the people, the places --or the political situation which is very important to the book.

My understanding of the situation is based on living through the era but well outside Europe.  Of disinterested reading of Aus papers of the time.

My knowledge of the intelligentsia is from a few chapters of a horror/fantasy book with a similar setting :-)

It is very difficult for me -- still not interested in learning about an important era of German history, difficult for me to identify with this book.

In fact... it was a huge relief when the heroine walked across the Chain Bridge in Budapest! I too have walked across (and been impressed by) that bridge :-)

Still, it's an easy-to-read book. Especially when I'm  falling sleep. I'm quite enjoying the silly romance.

And I really really want to reach, the betrayal.

The nature of that betrayal will... I suspect... fix my entire opinion of this book.

====

25 oct 24:

I take a break from reading. I mean, it's easy to read, though difficult to understand. It's a book for drifting, not at all gripping.

But I really do want to reach the end. Or at least reach the betrayal. So today, I start again.

And guess what? A German book with a kid stacking dead bodies in a WW2 Concentration Camp.

There's a word which means: when someone compares the situation to Nazi Germany -- further discussion is pointless. And must be ended.

I stop reading. 

Skim quickly, to discover the betrayal. As far as I can tell, it's all in the Epilogue. But before that...

The love seems to be suffering. In a deeply meaningful, to the characters, way.

Germany is rebuilding from East and West into one nation. Massive unemployment, massive changes, massive impact on history... possibly of interest if you are at all interested in raking over relatively recent German history. I'm not.

And so to the Epilogue. And the "betrayal". 

Which, blow me... is almost identical to what I have expected from page one.

Only two surprises:

(1) The betrayer has a life-long history of betrayal.

(2) Love and betrayal revolves round two lovers. Yet the betrayal is "aimed" -- at a third, not in the affair, person. I guess that's an interesting twist: a couple caught up in a situation that is none of their own personal concern.

I re-rate the book from six /10 down to four.

 

half blind. half deaf. dying of cancer.
so what?
notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com :-)

Dr Nick Lethbridge
Consulting Dexitroboper