“I am sure she wanted me as a witness to carry the story of her child out into the world, and may God help me, I will do so.”
Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the Bs.
Country: Bosnia
Title: Before the Feast
Author: Saša Stanišic
Language: German
Translator: Anthea Bell
Publisher: Random House GmbH, 2014; English translation, Pushkin Press 2015
Bubba may have shot the jukebox in American country music lore, but Herr Schramm shoots the cigarette machine in Bosnian-born Saša Stanišic’s Before the Feast. The novel, set in a small German village, takes place over the course of one night as the town “sleeps” before the Feast – a celebration that will bring in some tourists. Only the town isn’t sleeping.
Herr Schramm keeps getting interrupted in his quest to commit suicide. The fox is trying to bring back eggs to her kits. The renowned town painter is apt to drown herself in her attempts to paint the artwork that will be auctioned off during the celebration. Something’s a miss with the church bells and the young apprentice, an atheist, isn’t getting the opportunity to show what he can do. Frau Schwermuth is combatting a bit of madness as the town’s legends, lore, and history is spilling forth into the night. More people die than are born there, and they’ve already lost the ferryman. Who knows what the night will hold?
It’s a snapshot of one night, but that brief moment has flashes that take us back hundreds of years. The town is as much a character, if not more so, than the current and past inhabitants that walk the pages. Ghosts are disturbed. Memories stalk. Fear returns. The ground is stained with blood and life and still yet hope. And cigarette ash.
It’s a novel of remembering, of oral traditions, of storytelling deep into the night. The prose is at times jumbled, but mostly pretty. If you’re looking to follow a plot, there is not one. The plot is in the night and the stories themselves. It’s the night before the feast and everyone is sleeping and everything is alive. Except for the ferryman.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 