Dhe village novel has solidly increased its stock in contrast to the stock of the village population. There are currently so many village novels that one can speak of a poetic afforestation of entire regions. One almost always encounters townsfolk who have become villagers, who lead us into a cosmos of the inner problems of the townsman and the outer problems of the village. It is the issues of those who have moved (search for meaning, sustainability, retreat) that are grafted onto the problems of those who have stayed (vacancy, unemployment, moving away) – or are reflected in those of the village. The inconsistency of the city’s desires makes things vibrate. Seek the wide and find the narrow! Break free and dig for roots! On the one hand. On the other hand. The village novel thrives on inner strife.
Authors who have recently brought the village closer to us in this way are: Angelika Klüssendorf, Juli Zeh, Christoph Peters, Jan Brandt, Kerstin Preiwuß, Lola Randl, Lisa Kreissler, Judith Hermann, Saša Stanišić, Verena Güntner. Now Kristine Bilkau has added a novel to that. She called him “next door”. As succinctly as Judith Hermann called her 2021 novel “Daheim”. Juli Zeh’s village novel from the same year was called “Über Menschen”, Jan Brandt’s novel about his East Frisian home village was unimaginative “Ein Haus auf dem Land”. You can already tell from the choice of title that the capers of the imagination, the ornaments of the language and in general the whole originality compulsion of the urban observer should be treated rather gently.
This is also the case in “Nebenan” – a novel from the Schleswig-Holstein region, which treats its existential subjects as a purely minor matter. In other words, everything remains implied, vague, atmospheric. If something happens, it won’t be embellished. But therein lies the key to the punchline.
Kristine Bilkau: “Next door”. Novel. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2022. 288 p., hardcover, €22.
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Image: Luchterhand Literaturverlag
Right at the beginning, the doctor Astrid, who has been running a practice in the nearby district town for decades, is called to an emergency. A dead woman lies in the bathtub. Her husband, who was watching TV downstairs, only noticed her absence hours later and called the police. Astrid finds bruises on the woman’s wrists. Maybe a family tragedy, as the news says so beautifully? We don’t find out. But the dead woman and her husband will haunt us more often in this book. In the form of threatening letters that Astrid has been receiving for some time. From the man of the dead?
Kristine Bilkau sets many tracks in “Next Door”. You follow them a bit, lose track, look at something different, look away again at something new. The text plays with the dramatic potential of things without exhausting it. This is precisely what arouses our interest. But can he keep it awake in the long run?
In “Nebenan” Bilkau alternately tells about the life of the local Astrid and Julia who has moved here and runs a small pottery workshop. One is a mother of three who is about to retire, the other in the middle of fertility treatment. Both women are married. Astrid with retired teacher Andreas: “She has no idea how many hours he spends on the BBC, CNN and the Bundestag debates in Phoenix. On some days four to five, no probably even the workload of a whole working day.” Julia is married to the environmentalist Chris: “If it’s okay, I would drive to the institute, I can get the drone from there and take pictures here. before the weather might worsen again.”