Vignettes of Tanja’s life – set around the Berlin Wall / East Germany

17th September 2024

Half Swimmer by Kate Oskamp, vignettes of Tanja’s life – set around the Berlin Wall/East Germany.

TR: Jo Heinrich

The stories are set in and around Berlin, forming snapshot vignettes of Tanja’s life. She is a teen, developing into a young woman as she meanders through her school years and then embarks on dating. She is destined to be a model citizen but she has other ideas and as we know, the course of history soon changes.

Her story is set in the context of family life and as she mingles with the various family members, assimilating more information about the individuals who surround her. She learns of her grandfather’s incarceration and fighting during WW2, she sees her mother move through the educational echelons and become head teacher – with perhaps a quick fling on the side (it’s unclear); and Tanja herself may have more than flirted with her elderly neighbour (to what extent is also unclear).

Wikipedia

She visits the copper coloured Palace of the Republic (now demolished) and then she is jettisoned into the period after the Fall of the Wall, as she drifts past Peek & Cloppenburg (a department store chain that is well known in the West) and she has access to Monty Python and the antics of John Cleese et al, again indicating that life is now in full swing beyond the strictures of the former GDR/DDR.

This is a dry, confusing read that rambles about – peeking briefly at different periods and elements of Tanja’s life. Given that the author wrote Marzahn, Mon Amour, which is a great, short read, full of vigour and interest, this sadly, in contrast, just feels like a lumbering narrative that doesn’t know where it is going. Tanja is the leitmotif but the stories butterfly around so that we have little real sense of her as a person. She gets swallowed up by the culture of the GDR/DDR and perhaps that is the intention, given political expediency subsumed individuality during that period.

Peirene Press specialises in short reads that entertain readers for a couple of hours, they are always beautifully produced, with French flaps and quality design. Half Swimmer isn’t to my mind one of the stand-out reads in their literary stable.

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