On fathers and daughters – the tale of an impossible relationship.
AUFRUHR DER MEERESTIERE
[An Uprising of Sea Creatures]
by Marie Gamillscheg
Luchterhand/Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, September 2022
Luise is intelligent, Luise is independent, Luise is an island. She has also gained a reputation as an excellent marine biologist. Her specialty is the sea walnut, a ghostly illuminated jellyfish living in the dark waters of the oceans. When Luise is asked to go to Graz for a project with a famous zoo, she says yes right away. But Graz is the town she grew up in and the town where her estranged father, who is ill, still lives – and where the silence between them began, long ago…
Marie Gamillscheg writes compellingly and vividly about the process of freeing ourselves from our childhood, our body, and the rules that we believe to be our own – but which others have determined for us. At the same time, this novel is an attempt to describe the inherent impossibility of father-daughter relationships.
Marie Gamillscheg, born in Graz in 1992, lives and works in Berlin, freelancing as a journalist and contributing to ZEIT Campus and other media. She was awarded the city of Graz literature promotion prize in 2015 and the New German Fiction Prize. In 2016 she took part in the Klagenfurt Literature Course and was awarded a working stipend by the Berlin Senate. Her works have been published in many magazines and anthologies. Her novel All That Shines topped the ORF list of best books, was nominated for the aspekte Literature Prize and won the Austrian Book Prize for the Best Debut Novel in 2018.
Munich, 1827. Johanna von Seybach has moved from Königsberg to the magnificent Lily Palace, her uncle’s family seat – where an exciting season awaits her! Even before her official debut, it looks like a proposal from the eligible bachelor Friedrich Veidt is all but certain. But then Johanna has an unguarded moment of passion, and her reputation is suddenly in tatters. Friedrich drops her, and she’s left broken-hearted. Will anyone want to marry her, after such a scandal? Then she meets Alexander von Reuss at a glittering masked ball. That same evening, they grow closer than they should, experiencing a sensuous moment of surrender. But Johanna’s scandalous past is making such waves that even true love may not be enough to save her.
The ferry takes an hour for the crossing from the mainland to the little North Sea island – sometimes longer, depending on how rough the sea is. The Sander family has lived in one of the island’s two villages for nearly 300 years. Hanne has raised three children, while her husband has given up both his family and his seafaring life. Now her oldest son has lost his captain’s licence, is plagued by premonitions and tidal data, and is waiting for the storm to end all storms. Her daughter Eske looks after veteran sailors and widows at the old people’s home. She fears the influx of tourists more than the sea, because the tourists are turning the island’s culture into mere folklore. Only Henrik, Hanne’s youngest son, is at peace with himself. He is the first man in the family never to have dreamt of going to sea, and instead spends his time collecting flotsam on the beach. Over the course of one year, the Sander family’s life is irrevocably changed – by an almost unnoticeable breeze that eventually grows into a full-blown storm.
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