A farm mill in the Mühlviertel forms the starting point of Judith W. Taschler’s three-generation novel “We’re talking about Carl tomorrow”, the widely ramified narrative strands of which extend between the early 19th and 20th centuries. The mill belongs to the Brugger family, who build up their existence with diligence and tenacity and also run a small department store from the second generation. Violent hostilities from a competing large farmer and village patriarch are inevitable, especially since there are precarious family ties between the two families.
reversed roles
But differences of opinion also arise within the families themselves, with the twins Carl and Eugen Brugger in particular as the third generation representing different views of fulfilling one’s duties and seeking individual happiness. The cautious and thoughtful Carl feels very attached to his homeland, but distrusts the flimsy “happiness” that is lived out for him in the village and by his parents:
“He couldn’t check whether they were happy when they were newly in love, he could only believe them when they told him, but what was left of their happiness he found bitter and pathetic. His mother saw with hers absent-minded eyes through his father, and he treated her as if she were a raw egg that must not be broken under any circumstances. His aunt Fini was not even looked at by her husband Vinzenz, he also did not speak to her, not for years, not to say for decades. Before he stopped talking to her, he called her parched and useless…”
Carl would like to be more thoughtful about starting a family, but for the time being that’s out of the question anyway, since world history is interfering with ideas and life plans. He has to fight as a soldier in the First World War. The more easy-going Eugen emigrated to America a few years earlier, first worked there in a mill and then successfully built up a sawmill and timber trade with a partner.
When he returns to support his parents for a while, he meets his twin brother Carl, whom he believed dead, who deserted in the last days of the war. Because of this momentous decision, the otherwise very dutiful Carl can no longer resume his former life – a constellation that inspires Judith Taschler in the last part of the novel to play a grotesque game with reversed roles, which she noticeably enjoys writing.
The author has probably already created the starting scenario for a second part of the family saga, because she has announced that she is thinking about a sequel. A coherent venture, because Taschler is in her element when it comes to generational novels with a well-researched historical background. While the readers are still looking for orientation in the family network (a small enclosed Folder helps with the overview), the author rushes from episode to episode in the present novel in a lively narrative flow. Dramaturgically clever, she lets many a chapter end in the unknown in order to continue the narrative thread in another part of the complex family system, so that many gaps in the leaps in time are ultimately closed – or not.
Because tricking the foreseeable is also part of Taschler’s narrative skills. Some literary twists are as unexpected as the fateful twists and turns of life, just as the characters described also show ruptures that in many cases are not believed to be capable of. This is only irritating when they arise from too great a distance between the author and her protagonists or when the literary intention is too obvious.
Descriptively told
However, the breaks are used very attractively and convincingly when they show people in their inner turmoil. Rather, the joy of reading this book is slowed down by repetitions that make the narrative flow lengthy in places, although or because some episodes are retold mainly for the purpose of changing perspectives. But since Judith Taschler never slips into a mere table of contents in the summarizing narrative passages, but always has a vividly told scene ready, one quickly finds oneself back into the complex family history, which is also the multi-layered portrait of a Mühlviertel village through the ages.