Genre: Literary Fiction, Roman
Number of pages: 288
Publication date: Feb 17 2017
Imagine, you have two best friends. Imagine, they are your family. You cannot imagine you would ever lose them? Imagine, you do.
Alex, Ratte and Paul are best friends and together they just “click”. Comforting each other through endless days in school with silly classmates, spending every minute together, share every secret. And playing games like “Dare you” and “Imagine”.
Until the first love arrives and their friendship of which they thought could never end, suddenly begins to crumble.
Ratte falls in love with S. and Alex accuses her of neglecting her old friends. Paul falls in love with Alex, but she is blind for his feelings and does not notice. Instead, she falls in love with their new teacher, Mr. Spitzing, who spoils the balance in the friendship of the three 17-year olds. Their lightness of being together, their communication through eye expressions – nothing seems to work anymore. Until the conflict reaches its climax at a class trip to Auschwitz where Alex kisses Paul – and ultimately seems to lose her friends.
Lena Gorelik tells the story of a friendship which seems so beautiful, warm and fragile at the same time that the reader suffers with the three young adults when it starts to fade. And as the protagonists play their games, so do they play with words and language -which makes this novel much more than just a typical Coming-of-Age story.
Lena Gorelik (1981) is a German journalist and writer with Russian-Jewish background. In 1992, she and her family emigrated from Russia to Germany. She studied journalism at Deutsche Journalistenschule and Eastern European Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She publishes novels, scientific articles as well as travel literature and writes among others for Süddeutsche Zeitung and ZEIT. She debuted with “Meine weißen Nächte” (2004). Her second novel “Hochzeit in Jerusalem” (2007) was nominated for the German Bookprize 2007.