Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

Next World Novella is the first book in the Peirene series on Male Dilemmas: The Quest for Intimacy (I have previously reviewed all of the novellas in the Female Voices series; Beside the Sea, Stone in a Landslide and Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman). Hinrich Schepp is an ageing academic in a seemingly happy relationship with wife Doro. He enters their apartment to find her editing one of his manuscripts, a regular occurence.  But things aren't as they always are - Doro has passed away and the manuscript she was editing was Hinrich's long abandoned attempt at a fiction novel.  Using the disguise of story, Hinrich has revealed much about the past and he is shocked by Doro's alterations as they show she knows more than he ever realised.  Sitting down next to her corpse to read, Hinrich has to face up to his past and the disintegration of his superficially happy marriage.

I really enjoyed Next World Novella, more than I expected to.  I loved the wry voice of the author, the black humour and the macabre tone that pervaded the whole book.  There are many details of death included, giving the novella a gothic feel that appealed to me.  Politycki is clever in that he guides you to judge and poke fun at Hinrich but at the same time you can't help but feel sorry for him.  One moment you're judging him for fantasising about attractive waitresses within a few minutes of discovering his wife's corpse and the next you want to stop him from embarrassing himself with his clumsy attempts at an extramarital affair that have you cringing.

Hinrich traces the decline of his marriage to an operation he had to improve his vision; "It was terrible to see the world in such detail, so sharply outlined, all of a sudden!  It dazzled him with a confusingly large number of details". In a sense, this is a metaphor for the whole story.  Hinrich and Doro's marriage looks happy if you only look at it quickly, or not thoroughly.  As soon as you start to dig deeper, the misery becomes apparent.  The majority of the novel is narrated from Hinrich's point of view and it's black comedy at it's best but doesn't elicit too much emotion.  However, the final part is Doro's editorial opinion on the manuscript and this is the heart of the novel.  I had been reading along, poking fun at Hinrich whilst secretly pitying him and I simply wasn't expecting the emotional punch of Doro's words.  It's easy to forget the impact that one person's actions can have on another.  Including Doro's voice at the end made the novella cohesive and more powerful than Hinrich's narration alone could have been.

Putting aside the death and descriptions of the decay of Doro's corpse, Next World Novella will ring true for a lot of readers.  It's easy to ignore slow but serious decline in our personal relationships and it's often only when you look back that you realise how far things have gone.  Hinrich and Doro never found the relationships they were hoping for and both suffered with a lonlieness that must be very common.  The mix of this serious theme and the hints of comedy really worked for me.  It's one of my favourite Peirene novellas so far and will be hard to beat.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
Edition: Peirene Press, 2011
Score: 4.5 out of 5

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

I first heard about Sofi Oksanen's Purge through Willa's blog, and as soon as I read her review of it I knew I had to read it for myself.  Finally, almost four months later, I managed to get my hands on a copy.  Set in Estonia during the 1940s and 1990s, it is the story of two women who have both suffered abuse.

Aliide Truu is living an old-fashioned life in rural Estonia, cut off from all her neighbours.  She is happy being self-sufficient until she finds Zara, a badly beaten woman, in her garden.  As Aliide begins to help Zara, she is forced to look back on her own past and involvement with both the Estonian Nationalist Movement and the Soviet state.  Zara is a young Russian-Estonian girl who is visited by a friend and promised a luxurious life in the west, only to be sold as a sex slave and kept captive.

Purge is not an easy story to read.  Both women go through experiences that you could only describe as horrific and some of the things that happen to Zara in particular will make your stomach churn.  Aliide's story doesn't hide from the use of rape as an interrogation technique by Soviet forces.  These experiences are described graphically but not gratuitously by Oksanen, and you really feel for both women.

I went into the story knowing that there would be descriptions of sexual abuse, but for me the most disturbing thing about this book was the character of Aliide herself.  Oksanen slowly reveals more and more about her and her thought processes with the result that she has created a wonderfully three dimensional and distasteful character; at times I felt very sorry for Aliide but at other times I felt disgusted with her.  I didn't guess the revelation about her that comes in the closing section, and I felt that this was very clever of Oksanen.

Despite dealing with difficult subjects, Purge is definitely a worthwhile read.  I finished it a few days ago and yet my mind is still buzzing with thoughts about it.  It has illuminated a chapter of European history I knew very little about.  Purge is also a page turner, I found it almost impossible to put this book down as I was desperate to find out what would happen to Zara and why Aliide was the way she was.  It's a book that has a great impact and I would strongly recommend it.

Verdict: Powerful story of the abuse of two women in Estonia.

Source: Library

Score: 5 out of 5