[ book tip by Incentives ] When Karin invites her foster sister Lisa to move back with her and her boyfriend Alexander to their childhood home, Lisa agrees right away. Their parents have died and their siblings have all moved out. Peter lives in Salzburg and Grete has settled in London. Karin has been living in Vienna, but after finishing her translation degree she decides to move back to the empty house with Alexander and Lisa. Despite all their efforts to make their new housemate feel at ease, the couple soon starts to lose patience. The grown-up foster child is still liable to regurgitate her meals, wet herself, or ransack the cupboards in fits of rage. Over time the two women rediscover their old bonds and relive the traumatizing events that once unfolded under the very same roof. Karin and Lisa are weighed down by memories of sexual abuse and their father’s mysterious death, finally forcing Alexander to quit the scene.
Elisabeth Klar’s first novel sketches an unsettling portrait of a family thrown off-balance after taking in a foster child. The story is told from the perspectives of Karin and Lina, who try to get to the bottom of repressed incidents from their childhood, depicted in frequent flashbacks.
The author makes skillful use of the voices of both protagonists, to whom she cedes the process of navigating the “truth” in passages that alternate between dialogue and internal monologue. The intricately woven novel knows no taboos, initiating us into an otherly world of private experience and proffering nightmarish glimpses into the characters’ feelings and thoughts. In the end Lisa’s perplexing reactions seem nothing but logical.
Klar’s first book-length work of prose is a product of formidable talent manifested both in her complex narrative technique and her delicate psychological portrayal of the characters. The 28-year-old writer has produced a strikingly mature piece of fiction with the promise of even greater things to come. It is a magnificent debut, an enrichment of the landscape of Austrian letters, distinguished above all by the author’s delight in describing the unfathomable.

Abridged version of the review by Walter Wagner, 15 September 2014.
English translation by Jake Schneider.
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=10443&L

[ book info ] Klar, Elisabeth: Wie im Wald. (original language: German) Residenz Verlag, St. Pölten, Salzburg, Wien, 2014 . ISBN: 978-3-7017-1636-4.