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In her third novel, following Girls from Mars and Busfahrt mit Kuhn [Bus ride with Kuhn], the successful young adult writer Tamara Bach recounts the events of nine days in the lives of four teenage friends. The one girl and three boys are in different grades at a high school in a nameless German city. Although they spend a great deal of time together and constantly talk to one another on the phone, an even larger part of their communication consists in acting as cool as possible as they attempt to play down their problems or even hide them altogether.
Because each of them, in fact, has problems – nothing spectacular, just the everyday struggles that people their age face. Fienchen lives alone with her mother. Her father left the family years ago and is only occasionally in town on business. At such times he invites his daughter out to eat and tries to mollify his guilty conscience by giving her presents – something that Fienchen has learned to take advantage of very well. Her bigger problem, however, is that she is hopelessly in love with her charming friend Zanker. He only thinks of her as one of the guys, artfully employing his charm to wrap other girls (and even his mother) around his finger. Bowie is the third person in the group. His mother died of cancer six months ago, and since that time he has been living alone with his father who is fully unable to cope with his bereaved son. In many ways, Bowie is Zanker’s shadow and is secretly in love with Fienchen. Finally, there is Mono. His family is basically intact, yet as his parents run into financial difficulties with their small business, he is forced to take care of his little sister Ziska more and more. How, then, is he supposed to find the time, money and, above all, the courage to get his dream girl?
By continually shifting the narrative perspective, the author succeeds in capturing the thoughts and moods of each of her four protagonists. Bach’s rapid short cuts, initially somewhat dizzying, lead the reader along an irregular path from one event to the next, ultimately forming a photo album of everyday life. Thoughts, observations and dialogue are embedded in small scenes and create a complex portrait of each character’s present situation. Although the scenes themselves are often unspectacular and, at times, even laconic, suspense mounts over the course of the novel until each narrative strand reaches its cathartic climax.
No longer willing to bear the domineering behavior of his authoritarian father, Zanker finally tells him off and leaves. Bowie and Fienchen end up in bed more or less by accident. She is shocked by this “slip” and, unable to come to grips with her conflicting emotions, doesn’t want to see him again. Meanwhile, Mono realizes that he is going to have to be the backbone of the family and discovers that he is up to the task. Other painful lessons he learns along the way – namely, that the most popular girls are not always the nicest – help him in his discovery.
In showing how we learn by overcoming difficult situations, this intelligently written young adult novel is not just worthwhile reading for teens. Tamara Bach’s protagonists are all wiser at the end of the book than they were at the outset. And we readers are, too.
Heike Friesel
February 2008
[Translated by Franklin Bolsillo Mares]
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