Book of the week
Look At Me by Mareike Krugel (Text) $37 Katharina, the protagonist in Look At Me – the first novel of award-winning German author Mareike Krugel’s to be published in English – is a wife, mother and frustrated musician yearning to leave something musical behind for posterity.
She makes endless lists while undertaking household tasks, teaching music, chasing after her talented but scattered ADHD afflicted teenage daughter,
ministering to the emotional wellbeing of her older son, and interacting with the slapstick goings-on of her eccentric neighbours, while avoiding thoughts of the empty space where her third child should be.
Meanwhile, a threatening spectre lurks. Katharina has found a painful breast lump.
She is so overwhelmed by what this ‘‘something’’ means to her family, her lovable Greek husband and her own mortality that her actions and responses become more and more frenetic as she deals with such practicalities as her daughter’s major nosebleed at school and her son’s new love. All
the while, she is operating like a zombie, her dark thoughts clouded by the secret preoccupation striking at the heart of her womanhood.
‘‘A crooked nose gives my affable, innocuous face something rakish. I’m pleased, but I’m screaming inside too. I don’t want to hear the screaming, but it’s like tinnitus – there’s no blocking it out. ‘Too late,’ it screams. ‘Too late.’ If only you’d noticed it earlier – now it’s too late. Soon that rakish nose of yours will be nothing but food for worms.’’
This is not a breast cancer book, as such, but it reflects the reality of German statistics – which are
similar to New Zealand’s – in which one in about nine women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis, some terminal, in their lifetime. (Men get it, too, but far fewer.)
It’s a cruel irony that the disease’s very prevalence can evoke an almost ho-hum response from others.
Katharina’s terror is amplified by the commonplace goings-on of daily life around her and the thoughts of how her various intimates will react to a confession of her plight.
She wants others to see her for who she actually is – the ‘‘look at me’’ of the title – but she is too scared to look herself directly in the eye and face the urgent ‘‘something’’. The happenings around her absent third child, which we find out about eventually, underpin her anxiety.
This novel is a well-considered and often blackly humorous study of someone in a state of existential panic.
For that alone, there is a wealth of material to enjoy. Krugel’s characters and their deeds in this, her fourth novel, are well drawn and enjoyable, and this reader, for one, will look forward to her next outing in English.
–Rosa Shiels
This novel is a wellconsidered and often blackly humorous study of someone in a state of existential panic.