[ book tip by Incentives ] This book starts off explosively. The setting is an estate in Sievering, an outer district of Vienna. This is “the erstwhile property of a displaced family,” where young Leon and his mother go to live. “The primeval giant redwoods encircled the imposing structure of the Art Nouveau villa [...] These peculiar grounds were teeming with a kind of prehistory, where time washed in and receded, following the same botanical laws as fungi and mycelia, lichens and mosses.” That is where Aunt Agnes, who now owns the house after its seizure during the Nazi years, runs a home for the wealthy elderly. Leon’s single mother (“Mamu”) takes a job as a nurse at the Villa Aurelia, while her little son keeps Giovanni, one of the residents, company. For this, Aunt Agnes and Mamu are expecting him to get a handsome inheritance.

As the story unfolds, the dubiously human relationships in “Vom Gebrauch der Wünsche” (“On Using Up Wishes”) become more and more convoluted. Every last connection, whether erotic or familial, turns out to be ambiguous. Leon is forced to tango with Giovanni while wearing girl’s clothes and, despite his mistreatment, goes to great lengths to please the scruffy old man, hoping to use his money later to win over charming young Irmgard, who visits Giovanni periodically. Then Giovanni is murdered, Irmgard disappears, the villa falls into disrepair and Leon inherits nothing. Despite that, Leon goes on to become a successful astrophysicist. Love is the one area where he never gets what he wants: neither with Elsbeth, the cold-hearted writer and mother of his three children, nor with Gudrun or Paula.

Lydia Mischkulnig's language is exuberantly sensuous and revels in wordplay. Her characters’ actions resemble the swaying of seaweed on the ocean floor. The relationships are semi-unconscious and dictated by coincidences. The characters’ desires go unfulfilled and turn out to be a kind of scaffolding to make life somewhat bearable. Owning the “Aryanized” house is as ill-fated as the desire to own other people. In the end, Leon returns to the tango. The mysterious spins and turns of tango dancing and its alternating attractions and repulsions bring him closer to solving his life’s puzzles than he expects.

Abridged version of the review by Judith Leister, March 2014.
English translation by Jake Schneider
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=10317

[ book info ] Mischkulnig, Lydia: Vom Gebrauch der Wünsche. (original language: German) Haymon Verlag, 2014 . ISBN: 978-3-7099-7028-7.