The Fire by Daniela Krien

The Fire by Daniela Krien

German fiction

Orignal title – Der Brand

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Library book

Do you have any must-read writers? These are ones you have read before and loved, and you must get to their next book when it comes out. Daniela Krien is one of those writers. This is her third book to be translated into English. I have reviewed and loved the other two. She is very good at relationships and personal interplay. She has been a full-time writer since 2010 and has four books out. Her latest has not long been published in Germany. There is an interview with her and her translator, Jamie Bulloch. Where Daniela talks about how she came up with the idea behind the book but needed a way into writing the book, and when her own holiday cottage burnt down, it gave her a way to talk about the couple in the book and how their marriage is at the point of the book this is a couple dealing with the past a couple with as they say an empty nest,

They would have been leaving in three days. They’ll never be able to find something similar at such short notice, not this yeat, not in the circumstances. Without much expectation she enters her requests on a holiday apartment website.

No matches. She tries again on another site – with the same result.

Rahel goes to the website with the Alpine cabin. She clicks from picture to picture, from the geraniums in the window boxes to the small veranda with a view of the mountain range opposite, and back to the house, this time from a different angle. Then the stone basin by the well and the colourful wildflower meadow, and all of a sudden she can picture the blazing fire on the mountain. She sees animals fleeing, a column of smoke rising into a night sky studded with stars, and in the middle of it all Peter and herself, as if on a funeral pyre

The cottage is gone whwere now for them, the farm.

So when their Alpine cottage is burnt down in a fire at the last minute before they are due to go away. Rahel and Peter have to find another destination and go to a farm where, as a kid, Rahel spent many summers. She is a psychotherapist, and Peter, a professor, is one of those men struggling to cope with the modern world. This is a marriage that requires TLC. Grown daughters cause them problems when they visit them. Then, something Peter has said in his job has made him be seen as a transphobic. He is a man caught in the past. This is about when you lose touch with the youth, your wife, and your kids. It is a book about a man who is lost in time and in the West as they are both children of the East. This is the book’s point: what happens when your values are outdated and your children are Western? Your job is now Western.

He chose Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. At a castle people are celebrating a wedding that ends in a drama, while an errant planet passes threateningly close to the earth. When it speeds on its way, the danger seems to have been dispelled, but then it turns, heading straight for the earth. The collision cannot be prevented, and only the depressive Justine – the bride – is serene about the impending end of the world. The film concludes with the planet Melancholia hitting the earth, destroying it. Peter kept staring at the screen for minutes afterwards. The credits were finished by the time he snapped out of his torpor.

Peter reaction to this is maybe more than it seems mabye his world is being destroyed!!

I love subtle books. This is one of those books about a couple at that age when the world has changed just enough to make you seem out of time, even more so when you grow up in the old East German, and the world you live in now is like Wtrst germany values attitudes have changed. Peter is a typical male of his age if he was here he’d be a fan of Rowling and Farage I could see buying a daily mail and moaning about the world he lives in. Yes, this is a universal story of empty nest cou,le but what happens when the gap is between you and, like Rahel, she wants to light the spark, but Peter is maybe too far gone to get a spark from. This would make a great film. The tension between the couple would be perfect. The marriage in Children’s Act Falling Apart is a perfect example of two great actors. This is a tremendous two-handed film. A younger version of on golden pond in a way a couple trying to escape and find a new path as memories and the future collide. Can you think of any other books dealing with Empty nests and a marriage falling apart and how some men are just stuck in the past.

Winston’s score: A 3 down from Krien. I can’t wait for book number four. She is a must-read writer for me.