Far-fetched and convincing

“If you want, I’m really far-fetched“, says Dr. Blank. That’s anything but exaggerated since Dr. Blank is dead. Nevertheless, he finds himself on the edge of the bathtub of a woman named Katja - the first-person narrator in Mariana Leky’s new novel “Die Herrenausstatterin“. Many other incidents in this novel are hardly less far-fetched. For example the encounter with firefighter Armin who is using a flashlight to look for a fire and who commits a break-in once in a while to relieve stress. “Others do yoga”, Armin explains. Blank and him support Katja – this “package of neuroses” (Leky) – after the death of Katja’s husband Jakob. Armin simply accepts the fact that only Katja can see and talk to the dead Blank. Much like the reader is willing to accept the most far-fetched story if it is well-narrated. “Die Herrenausstatterin” is very well-narrated.

Within the framework of lit.cologne, Mariana Leky presented her second novel in the sold-out Cologne Arkadas theatre last Monday (March 15, 2010). She admitted to the audience at the beginning that she was “full of stage fright from tip to toe"; which is why she might chirp. However, she doesn't chirp at all; the contrary in fact: The in 1973 Cologne-born author and now resident of Berlin is reading confidently and pointed - whereby one can hear a smile in her voice on her own text. The audience is less reserved showing its joy. People are laughing loudly and often about Leky’s stories on Katja’s incidents with the dead philologist and the kleptomaniac firefighter.

This is the case even though many sad things happen in the novel. It begins with Jakob’s adultery, carries on about his separation from Katja and his accidental death and leads up to the inexorable disappearance of the beloved Dr. Blank at the end of the story. Right within this field of tension between the tragic incidents and her humorous presentation lies the special quality of Leky’s text. The author gave proof of her talent in the "Liebesperlen" stories (2001) and her novel "Erste Hilfe" (2004). Leky manages to tell the inconceivably sad in a way that it gets to you - yet you have to laugh. This is how her characters gain a foothold in life again - despite all their strokes of fate.

When prompted with the question if it was her intention from the beginning to write a funny book, the author answers: “Yes, I want the book to be funny. And then I write sad stuff.” To make it easier for the reader to engage with it, she described the incidents in a funny way. Sounds complicated? It’s not. At least not for Leky who has an eye for the absurd and thus often enough for the oddities in life. And who has the courage to pass the boundary to the paranormal with the invention of Dr. Blank.

“I like it if unreal things play into reality and make it shine", she says. And apart from that she was not even sure herself if Blank was a phantasm of Katja or really a ghost. “Who knows?”, she asks with a smile. The novel doesn’t give the answer. And that’s good.

If it was difficult for her to write about this “far-fetched” Blank? No, answers Leky, the opposite in fact, it was easier than she had originally thought. “Maybe because I pictured Blank in the way Katja sees him. Not dead but as normal human being who simply doesn’t need to shave any more.” Also the other, sometimes a bit exaggerated ideas came to her easily during her work on this novel. After years of non-writing, “Die Herrenausstatterin" almost poured out of her within only a few months. Yet she asked herself many times in the writing process: “Is this really OK to write?" But then she decided over and over again: “Into the book with it!” The right decision. The audience thanked her with much applause.

Leky, Mariana:
Die Herrenausstatterin
Novel
Cologne 2010, DuMont publishing house
208 pages
18.95 euros
ISBN: 978-3-8321-9577-9
 

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