A daughter goes on a Mediterranean cruise with her father to spend rare time together. From this memory other memories are strung by the narrator to produce a powerful novella of eighty-nine pages.
The narrator is not specifically named, other than as “Johannes’s daughter” and she uses a mixture of first and third person and tenses to give a shifting and constantly partially focusing revelation of herself, more internal than addressing a reader. Flick through the book and you will notice there is sparse dialogue, though social situations and family life are the subjects. The viewpoint is the detached observer.
The narrators childhood and surroundings are evoked as a world of stifling and repressed bourgeois convention and relative materiality. Into this the narrator suffers the separation of her parents and the brittle care of Orsola her grandmother and subsequent deaths.
Emotional detachment and apathy marks all the family. Their indifference seems bolstered by a determination never to engage and to be frank about death and suicide. Yet Jaeggy uses the atmosphere of ennui to spin the tale with a sense of place, the past, mystery and suspense, which engages.
Also, there is a whole other element to the writing, it uses imagery, metaphor and gem like passages which rise to prose poetry, p13, “The heart incorruptible crystal”. Paragraphs on p34-35 use the metaphor of the piano and music to describe relationships. The deathbed scene p41, with its “green nightlight”, as an image, could compare with Owen’s “thick green light”, in “Dulce et Decorum est”. Maybe history and misfortune has blighted this middle European family, which walks on the edge with insouciance.
The narrator uses the voyage to acquire sexual experience, perfunctory and mercenary, which seems to suit, a tiny expectation of emotional engagement is quickly lost. Apparently, Proleterka, the name of the ship, can translate as proletarian lass, which is the last thing the narrator is. Her coming of age on the ship only confirms her as becoming like her ancestors.
Jaeggy’s poetry in this book is intriguing. Some paragraphs could stand alone on a page like poems, love is hidden and space speaks. It is probably worth a second reading. I suspect I have missed deeper things said by this skilled and careful writer.
Mark's Reviews 