Tonio Schachinger: Nicht wie ihr.

Not like you.
Novel.
Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 2019.
ISBN: 978-3-218-01153-2.

Ivo Trifunovic, an Austrian pro soccer player from Vienna’s Floridsdorf neighborhood who is now playing for England, sits in his Bugatti outside the supermarket, waiting for his wife and young daughter. Ivo’s car is his refuge whenever he wants to cool down after a match or didn’t even get any playing time, when he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, when he doesn’t want to drive home but has nowhere else to go. Driving is his favorite pastime (apart from soccer, of course)—his haven from anxiety and stress. He is catapulted out of that "spaceship" by the sight of Mirna, the love of his youth, but seeing her again so unexpectedly doesn’t quicken his pulse, tickle his libido, or spark a pang of longing—Ivo feels "his chest or his heart" stiffen. When his wife and daughter enter his flying machine, which was not built for three, he concludes that he has stopped feeling anything at all.

Schachinger has a very close eye for his character. He portrays Ivo’s emotions, his inability to access his own feelings, and his ability nevertheless to function in the stadium despite his resulting sense of emptiness. The man is lonely and has little attachment to his surroundings, his family, his colleagues and friends. But his old flame Mirna does eventually reach his heart—or his chest.

The novel is a believable portrayal of contemporary ideas of body image and gender roles, along with the rise in transnational soccer talent and the racist reactions it provokes. The game of soccer itself is only shown from Ivo’s perspective, through his own introspection: his love and enjoyment of the game, the stations in his career at Real Madrid and Chelsea, and his current situation including the associated life in the gilded cage of his mansion in Liverpool. The novel allegedly had the working title of Ich kauf’ dein Leben (I’ll buy your life), a quote by a current Austrian soccer player whose life partly inspired the author.

But the final chapter does take place on the pitch. After being traded to Rome, the soccer player Ivo Trifunovic is still a young man who suspects it might be better to go about things more slowly and cautiously, who has owned up to some mistakes and is prepared to accept certain compromises and understandings... but perhaps not in a new game with a new opportunity!

Abridged version of a review by Angelika Reitzer, October 3, 2019
English translation by Jake Schneider

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