When your own (love) life is made into literature

The thirty-year-old first-person narrator, caught in an unsatisfactory marriage and a single mother of a pubescent daughter, coincidentally gets the acquaintance of the well-known writer and lecturer Tosch (alias Thomas Hürlimann) at a course at the Leipzig Literature Institute, and both fall in love.

Despite (or because of) the age difference of 19 years – it is 49 – a real « amour fou » quickly develops, with the erotic and literary liaison ongoing progressive obsessive traits. Despite the fact that Tosch is by no means a family man, and he always puts his literature more than anything, everyday life in Switzerland is quite harmonious for some time …

When they got to know each other, she was still young and he was almost old. She became his literary student, his lover, his confidante, and both swore to do everything to each other « with all the titms and sacrifices ».

Between the two, a relationship full of lust, dedication and cheerfulness has developed over almost two decades, but which, just when the daughter is in the middle of puberty, has taken on a tragic turn by a devastating diagnosis.

The first-person narrator becomes the lover to the nurse who tries to save what is still to be saved. The narrator’s life man disappears relentlessly and irretrievably, and after 19 years the time of farewell is approaching, although also with the comforting hope of a new life …

A humiliating-enclosed billing?

Katja Oskamp, ​​who is apparently nothing human, tells from a very subjective perspective, as relentlessly as it is as free as it is tenderly reserved without tender, which contains the existence of these passionate-lifting « amour fou » as challenges. She does not write without self-irony and sometimes grotesque humor, but at least never self-pity-lamoyant.

Although the Swiss writer Thomas Hürlimann apparently gave his consent to the publication of the novel in an email to the publisher, there was still critical voices in the reception of the book, especially with regard to the sometimes very bluntly intimate descriptions.

In particular, the detailed representation of the progressive crowds of Tosch could be perceived as disturbing and perhaps even as a humiliating and enveloping billing. Indeed, it is left to the assessment of each individual whether all the details really have to be expected in this context.

Regardless of this reserved, the dynamically written, fundamental novel – despite some (avoidable) narrative lengths – reads quite fluently. This is also due to the fact that the text held in five chapters almost reads almost as individual short stories.

Katja Oskamp tells clearly and precisely, in the balancing act between economical-laconic, wistful-thoughtful and tender-related tone of a great love. In doing so, she draws the portrait of a woman from her thirties to the fifty with an immensely self -irony and (partly black) humor and thus not least designs a very personal biography.