A child is found standing on the street, with an empty bucket in her hand, and no memory of her name, her family or her past. Elsewhere, a girl grows up surrounded by familiar faces - a wet nurse, a piano teacher, a gardener, a best friend and a distant mother - but soon finds them slipping mysteriously from her life. In the company of these girls, we are compelled to tread the uncertain and spikey terrain of memory, where words are dropped like clues to reveal what has been hidden, forgotten or erased.
A child is found standing on the street, with an empty bucket in her hand, and no memory of her name, her family or her past. Elsewhere, a girl grows up surrounded by familiar faces - a wet nurse, a piano teacher, a gardener, a best friend and a distant mother - but soon finds them slipping mysteriously from her life. In the company of these girls, we are compelled to tread the uncertain and spikey terrain of memory, where words are dropped like clues to reveal what has been hidden, forgotten or erased.
'I haven't read anything this good - this bracing, unflinching and alive - for a long time' Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She has worked on opera and musical productions and her fiction has been translated into 13 languages worldwide.
A haunting, offbeat novella of real profundity
*Lionel Shriver, author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN*
With the detached spare prose and mysterious internal logic of a
fairy tale, the writing has a dark, transformative power - it gets
into the blood stream and refuses to leave. Beguiling and
original
*The Times*
Intense and beautifully written
*Time Out*
Erpenbeck excels as miniaturist, examining the psychology of her
blank-eyed outsider with language as sharp as a scalpel
*Guardian*
The kind of stories that enter the imagination by stealth ... Like
dysfunctional fairy tales, these beautifully written stories
explore the shifting sands of memory and identity
*Belfast Telegraph*
Don't try to learn too much about the origins of these two spare
and spooky novellas before you submit to their uncanny mood ...
What lies beyond ambiguity, in Susan Bernofsky's pin-sharp
translations, is Erpenbeck's power to grip, chill - and haunt
*Independent*
These two novellas showcase Erpenbeck's disconcerting material and
her pared-down style ... The subtle interplay of childish
interpretation and adult euphemism, gradually unravelling its grim
meaning is thoroughly chilling
*Financial Times*
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