[ book tip by Incentives ] Isabella Straub knows not only how to write but also how to present her work. However, the media attention garnered by her debut is the result of the precision of her craft and the complex strata of topics found in Südbalkon (South Balcony).

It’s not surprising that the reviews use sometimes contradictory adjectives. The novel, located between tragedy and comedy, is full of clever wordplay and humor described now as “malicious” and then as “without a trace of malice.” At any rate, the text is highly addictive.

The novel is narrated by Ruth Barbara Amsel, a failed medical student who wrote obituaries for a while and is now unemployed. She says of herself: “The way I’m programmed, I can only lie to people I know.” The characters in Südbalkon are believable and have an authentic feel. There’s Ruth’s boyfriend Raoul, a programmer full of ideas for starting businesses, who ends up in the hospital for reasons that are never really clear, and there’s Ruth’s best friend Maya, who is married to a rich man. There are Ruth’s parents, who live in a ménage à trois, and Mr Othmar, “an administrator of failure” at the “Society for Reintegration” as well as Father Gerfried, a musical and hypocritical hospital chaplain...all in all, a cornucopia of ordinary people.

Ruth keeps hold of the loose ends. She lives off the benefit payments she receives from the “Why Society”, which she also uses to support Raoul, whom she suspects of being unfaithful to her. She thinks it’s with Maya; she would also rather take charge of a cleaning rag than of her own fate and writes a kind of diary, in which she jots down notes about people. Ruth is also fond of special places that Isabella Straub calls “fake-places.” These immediately bring to mind the “non-places” of French anthropologist Marc Augé. In Südbalkon, these places are a hospital, the offices of the Why Society, the kitchen showroom in a furniture store, and a shop for esoterica at a gas station.

Ruth is a genuinely likeable figure. She’s weak, but she’s also smart and funny. In Isabella Straub’s hands, the story of this woman becomes a nimble observation of life in the precarious class.

Abridged version of the review by Helmut Sturm, June 2013. English translation by Laura Radosh
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=9991 

[ book info ] Straub, Isabella: Südbalkon. (original language: Deutsch) Blumenbar Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2013 . ISBN: 978-3-351-05002-3.