Between deserts-chicken farm and LA-Slums

first set
As picture, it is beautiful – a joggender man, over his shoulder, the San Gabriel Mountains, on the other hand, the rise of the Hollywood Freeway that attaches to the bow via the Pasadena Freeway.

The book
begins With a chase of a special kind on Highway 101 in Los Angeles during the morning rush hour "Wonder Valley", the third novel by the American author Ivy Pochoda and her first, which is available in English. In the distance you can hear sirens, the sky, the Roar of the rotors of a Helicopter. The traffic on the 101 is jammed. Drivers movies with their Smartphones, a naked Jogger, running between the columns. He is still on the road, as the first films in TV News and on the Internet popping up. Tony, a lawyer on the way to the office, leaves his SUV in the middle of the road and chasing the Naked. He knows not really why. Somehow, the Nude has triggered in him an urge to break free from his routine life.

This prologue is something like the culmination point of this kaleidoscopic-scale literary Thriller. Pochoda told in chapters that skip between the years 2006 and 2010, back and forth, the stories of five protagonists. In addition to the lawyer, Tony and the joggenden James Ren, who had come with Twelve for murder in the youth jail, and now Los Angeles’ homeless, his mother is looking for is there. Then there is Blake, the Dealer will know, "what are the tablets of your choice have had side-effects and which one was just healthy and nothing else". His friend and Mentor Sam has been stabbed to death. "Sam knew no fear. Blake was still working on it." And there is Britt, the crashed tennis hope of a Uni that asks, what time is you "was the first mistake", "what is the foot she had set where wrong?". The world is likely to be familiar to the today, 42-year-old author, was not in itself successful, professional Squash player at Harvard University.

In the desert area of Twentynine Palms in the Hinterland of Los Angeles, in Skid Row in Los Angeles, where the homeless live on the streets, and on Highway 101 in Los Angeles, Pochoda brings together your figures, or have their paths cross. With wit and empathy at the same time, she tells the equally moving as the bizarre stories of their characters. As one of the highlights, in addition to the naked jogger, whose parents operated a chicken farm in the desert: The father gathers as a kind of New-Age Guru interns, and especially interns, who will then have to create on the bloody day of slaughter Hand.

All the characters in this novel have dark secrets, their stories are characterised by violence and fear. And they are, each in their own way, seeking a kind of redemption

rating

author
Ivy Pochoda, born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, has an MA in classical Greek, English and American literature from Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an MFA in creative Writing from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. In addition to her studies, she devoted herself mainly to the Squash Sport. In 1998 she was the national champion in the single, and led the Harvard Team in four consecutive years for the U.S. championship, she has also received various awards such as Rookie of the year, the Ivy League player of the year; in 2013, she was inducted into the Harvard Hall of Fame. Until 2007, she played professional Squash, and their top international placement ranking 38 in the world rankings in her first professional year. In 2009, she published her first novel, "The Art of Disappearing". Already for her highly acclaimed second novel, "Visitation Street" (2013) she received several awards, as well as for "Wonder Valley" (2017). "Wonder Valley" is her first novel that was translated into German. Ivy Pochoda lives with her husband, the filmmaker and screenwriter Justin Nowell, in Los Angeles.

Ivy Pochoda: "Wonder Valley" (Original: "Wonder Valley", Ecco, New York, 2017). From the English by Sabine Roth und Rudolf Hermstein. Ars Vivendi Verlag, Cadolzburg 2019. 397 p., CA. 32 Fr.".

All of the other meetings you will find in the Collection "crime of the week".

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 02.05.2019, 11:45 PM