The amount of different adjectives, metaphors, similes, descriptive passages etc. Elfriede Jelinek employs for the sexual act in her book LUST are absolutely amazing and unprecedented in any book I have read before (fiction or non-fiction).
In attempting to show the wife (Gerti) as property of her factory director husband (Hermann), Jelinek drives the point home with repeated (and I mean repeated descriptions) of sexual acts (some perverse) that the husband forces on the wife. Hermann is also called “The Direktor” and to say he has a strong sex drive would be the understatement of understatements.
About halfway through, Gerti meets Michael an ambitious young man from the nearby town (the story is set in an Austrian ski town ) and embarks on a relationship with him. Not for love or sex but as a hopeful escape from Hermann’s daily rapes.
Of course, this leads to tragedy. I found of the three Jelinek books I have read this was the most poetic and the most surreal. Her descriptions of the sex act are illusionary, lyrical, sometimes you don’t know what’s going on then she will through in an anatomically correct term so the reader can find their place again.
For that reason, it’s an amazing book although her point about marriage as property is beat into the head of the reader in a too forceful and repetitive way and one gets both sick and worn out with the continual weird sex scenes.
Also like WONDERFUL WONDERFUL TIMES the ending sequence seems rushed.
Still just on the basis of language and writing craft this is a book worth reading
LUST is the last of the three books by Elfriede Jelinek I purchased recently. I am hoping to read THE PIANO TEACHER soon as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment