At first glance, in the two parts of her new book, Katja Lange-Müller recounts two curious incidents from one woman’s childhood and youth: In eighth grade, the dismal school-day routine is interrupted by the appearance of a man who introduces the pupils to a collection of dead and living reptiles in the auditorium. Years later, the young woman strolls through a newly opened department store and ends up as a prisoner of a dubious department-store detective in the basement. Yet what makes Katja Lange-Müller’s book a work of art is what develops out of these incidents, and in particular how she recounts them: with tremendously close observation to detail, disarming humor and an incredibly complex linguistic style.
“Verfrühte Tierliebe” is a book about the loneliness of growing up, the agonizing reality of the body in human coexistence, power and impotence between men and women. Last but not least, it is a book about a country that ceased to exist in 1989.
