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A review by piripiw
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
5.0
Melancholy. Painful. Beautiful.
Impressive translation. A sustained note or chord. Pitched perfectly. Things happen. Trauma, joy, peace, ambivalence, neglect. One review says the sexual violence served no purpose. I think that is the point. None of these events are subjugated to a narrative. "... it strikes him as strange that, independent of what is happening, one day is always followed by another, and to this day he doesn't know what it actually is that is continuing." There is no amount of dramatising or thematising that can make the trauma anything other than it is. So maybe it *is* best to simply present it. To let the land hold it. To let one day follow another.
Impressive translation. A sustained note or chord. Pitched perfectly. Things happen. Trauma, joy, peace, ambivalence, neglect. One review says the sexual violence served no purpose. I think that is the point. None of these events are subjugated to a narrative. "... it strikes him as strange that, independent of what is happening, one day is always followed by another, and to this day he doesn't know what it actually is that is continuing." There is no amount of dramatising or thematising that can make the trauma anything other than it is. So maybe it *is* best to simply present it. To let the land hold it. To let one day follow another.