The village is the main actor

There was once a time when people lay down in the afternoon. Between the hours of twelve and two were sacred. After the meal, the man rested, for he was up early – especially in the village, as there were still farmers in the very early their milking cows had to. Of a village and the Disappearance not only of the rest periods, Dörte Hansen tells in her second novel, "lunch hour".

The fictional Town of Brinkebüll once had everything, what was a village: Church, school, Shop, Inn, Avenue of chestnut trees, hedges and meadows and forests. However, within a few decades it turned into a comfortable with the car-to-reach place to sleep for new arrivals. And at the same time, the lunch disappeared to rest, with all its glories and Stealthiness.

Brinkebüll is everywhere

Brinkebüll is located in the North of Friesland, the home of Debbie Hansen. Three years ago, she has managed to achieve with your debut novel, "the Old country" a sensational Bestseller. Although the people speak in the novel, extensively low German and love their brittle, windy home. But at the same time, Brinkebüll is everywhere, because all the villages have suffered in the North, South, West and East, a similar fate.

The village is the main actor in this novel. "Lunch hour" sets in the mid-sixties, as the country came the surveyors, the large land consolidation prepare. From small spaces to huge areas of arable land, which left no space for hedges and hares were left. The storks remained in the way, and a little later a wide, paved road was from the bumpy cobblestone slope, the children were run over and young people with a father's car on the way from the Disco fatally injured.

to make this change through a slightly crazy, in your thoughts sunken, non-responsive woman rattles. Marret Feddersen is the daughter of Sönke and Ella Feddersen, and operate a hospitality business. She collects sings feathers, stones, tree bark, and dead animals, and hums all the time and rants incessantly from the end of the world.

"lunch hour" is more of a home than a home novel. And a novel about the question of where man belongs.

Marret was 17 when she became pregnant. Who the father is, wants to, or can't you tell. Ginger, the son brings you to the world, will be reared by the grandparents Sönke and Ella. To a degree, he leaves the village and is an archaeologist in Kiel. Ginger is almost 50, when he returns for a year after Brinkebüll back to take care of the grandparents. So the novel begins.

In a state of constant change from Chapter to Chapter the author tells the present and the past of the village. After you get to know the quirky residents with their quirks: the Baker's daughter, the reading is always, even behind the sales counter. The village school teacher, Steensen, the rustic-style educational methods preferred. Or Heiko Ketelsen, who has a heart and a penchant for the Wild West. The village is a big family. A village of the novel is, therefore, something like a family novel.

Each Chapter is entitled with a song title. Ginger, the main character, especially loves Neil Young. Grew up but he is with the music box in the Inn, from the "blame it on the Bossa Nova", "We never were apart to go" or "Boy, come back soon". The hits for everything has set in ginger over a period of decades. You are responsible for the origin characterizes a people. Also on the lunch hour", rather a country of origin " - as a native Roman. And a novel about the question of where man belongs.

nothing Here transfigured

Debbie Hansen is a more conventional Narrator, somewhere between Dora Heldts North sea-family idylls, but they are very much the romantic, and Juli Zeh's "people", the politically ambitious. Against any kitsch is suspected, it is not as sublime as against the modern natural trend of the big city dwellers who romanticize the country, because they know it.

villages such as Brinkebüll today are long since arrived in the epoch of the Restoration, where the straightened rivers and streams back to their curves and also, the stork nest on the Church roof. And yet the townsfolk look on the country just what it is no longer there. In this tension between destruction and nostalgia for the Lost lunch "hour".

The view goes back, in the Knowledge that it couldn't go as it was. The Modern came with all the violence, but with the manure heap, and the labors of the field work could not continue. In the old village it was tight. Only for the Crazy, the Miracles and the nerds, there was enough space. You are gone Feddersen how Marret. And that is why there are now these pleasing an unsentimental, quietly melancholic, sober told novel that intends all of them.

Debbie Hansen: lunch hour. Penguin, Munich 2018. 320 PP., approx. 34 Fr.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 30.12.2018, 19:18 Uhr