German / Germany
Elektrische Fische
(Electric fish)
Kreller, Susan
(text)
Hamburg: Carlsen, [2019]. – 191 p.
ISBN 978-3-551-58404-5
Home | Language | Homesickness | New beginning | Foreignness | Belonging
Reading age: 14+
White Ravens issue: 2020
Repotted: All of a sudden Dara, Aoife, and Emma find themselves in Velgow, their mother’s hometown in north-eastern Germany. Hold on, weren’t they in Dublin a moment ago? Yet, because their mother decided they couldn’t stay there because they’re broke, Velgow it is. Everything there is mysterious (who is Ernst Thälmann?) or wrong (tea bags have strings!). The fact that the grandparents aren’t willing to remember how to pronounce “Aoife”, and that the so-called Baltic “Sea” is little more than a bad joke, makes everything worse. Emma wants to go home, to Dublin. In “Elektrische Fische”, Susan Kreller tells a gentle and poetic story of homesickness and wanderlust, and of a speechlessness due not only to missing words – after all, language is existence. Gradually, Emma works her way towards new words, new meanings, new codes; and when she meets Levin, two searching souls find each other. [IG]