| FICTION | |
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 |  | Annette Pehnt
House of Turtles Piper Verlag
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| | In her latest novel Annette Pehnt treats with both caution and candor a subject which is an even greater taboo in our society than death itself: senescence, the gradual onset of frailty, and the concomitant loss of control of one's own life. It should thus come as little surprise that such subject matter has seldom found its way into fiction. Only within recent years have a handful of writers in their 30s and 40s dared to broach this unappealing segment in our lives. Thomas Lang, in his novel Am Seil, and Sabine Peters, in the novel Abschied, both write of the tenuous relationships which develop between grown children and their parents in times of illness and death. And now Annette Pehnt in House of Turtles, an upper-class nursing home actually named Ulmen House where mentally and physically impaired seniors live out the rest of their days, their only remaining diversion being the sporadic visits from their children, who are themselves struggling with their own lives. A variety of characters populate Ulmen House's universe. An increasingly senile professor, who, in the belief that he is still working on his research, scribbles upon page after page in his notebook, and his son Ernst, a less than enthusiastic teacher and divorced father of a six-year-old daughter, are juxtaposed with the Von Kanters. Mrs. Von Kanter, in spite of her speech impairment and confinement to a wheel chair, continues to reign with authority over her daughter Regina, who, while still single, is herself no longer the youngest. Every Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 awaits Ernst and Regina. That is when they visit their elders, a weekly appointment which is as dreaded as it is mandatory and which they carry out full of shame, sadness and helplessness. As they meet in the parking lot one Tuesday, relieved from the completion of their dutiful visit, they recognize the discomfort each of them feels on account of their parents as well as their own attitudes towards them. And following a chance encounter at a spa, they develop for each other a desire which, however, is more desperate than truly passionate. Thereafter, they go to bed with each other every Tuesday evening - liberated from once again having survived the burdensome confrontation with their parents' decline, and happy to have someone to hold, knowing that their parents are becoming more and more remote as they inexorably approach death. Desiring to get away from it all, they take trip together to Malaysia in the hopes of finally becoming close in more than just a physical sense. Yet their attempt fails miserably as Regina is unable to envision a future together with Ernst. Incapable of openly expressing their needs and desires, all the while oppressed by the emotional presence of their parents, Ernst and Regina remain alienated from each other. During a visit to a temple, Ernst sees in a large group of old and maimed turtles a cruel caricature of his father and the other patients at Ulmen House. The omen also provides the novel with its title: House of Turtles. Since neither Ernst nor Regina feel a "spark", they return sober, yet somehow braced for their daily lives. Regina pledges to do more for herself, while Ernst entertains vague notions of returning to his ex-wife and daughter. Neither of their perspectives offer great promise of a happy end. That Regina, in fact, does find a sense of fulfillment in a yoga group appears just as dubious as Ernst's newfound happiness with his family. Annette Pehnt's great talent as a precise, unsparing, yet never merciless storyteller lies in her ability to merely allude to all these narrative elements - in addition to the predictable fates of the professor, Mrs. Von Kanter, and all the other residents - without spelling everything out for the reader. With House of Turtles she has succeeded in writing a novel that, in spite of its oddly comical moments, is a moving and eye-opening account of experiences and sentiments which we, too, will someday have to come to terms with as best we can. In that respect, and in spite of its bleakness, House of Turtles is truly an edifying book. Annette Pehnt creates with utmost ease the characters which inhabit the fictional microcosm of Ulmen House. They are recognizable without being cliché-ridden: the resolute nurse who always has everything under control yet who succumbs to depression once a year; the young, motivated male-nurse whose girlfriend leaves him because he is too serious; and, of course, the "group in the corner", those nameless men and women who sit in the lobby of the nursing home day after day, attempting to still their desire to live by wresting from the visitors' comings-and-goings a semblance of life. The novel, narrated with assurance in the third person, offers compelling insight into the feelings of these older individuals, their children, and the irresolvable power struggle which exists between the two generations. The novel conveys vividly and without sentimentality how such codependent relationships function, concluding that no one has the clear upper-hand, that there is nothing anyone can do but to accept oneself as one is while another's life draws to a close. Anne-Bitt Gerecke | |||||