2023-07-13 03:25:30
We can only guess what was invented about the novel “The Duration of Love” and what is experienced, but the disappointment and bitterness must have been great. The dedication of Sabine Gruber’s new novel suggests that the author shares some experiences with her protagonist, the translator Renata Spaziani. Suddenly losing your partner after 25 years is one thing, being betrayed by his family is another.
Renata and the architectural historian and photographer Konrad Grasmann were considered a model couple who were bound by love and respect. However, their close relationship was never officially authenticated by a marriage, and the signed will turns out to be invalid due to formal errors. At first, Renata has more than enough to do with herself when the news of her partner’s sudden death is brought to her in a parking lot on the motorway, and she therefore lets the first humiliations and insolences of Konrad’s Tyrolean family slip away. Only gradually does she realize that she is being denied any claim to an inheritance. Even common property or her own gifts to Konrad are taken from her.
Sabine Gruber, born in Meran in 1963, lives in Vienna and today one of the most awarded South Tyrolean authors in German, describes unreal, traumatic events that overlap and paralyze her otherwise strong, self-confident protagonist. The death that ends a life together out of nothing; posthumous attacks of jealousy and cases of suspicion that the partner could not always have been honest about everything; the shock of being at the mercy of the material greed of strangers – all of this paralyzes Renata. She doesn’t fight, but lets things happen to her.
Gruber describes this special case, which becomes even more peculiar due to Konrad’s specialization in unknown fascist architecture in Northern Italy and the graphic processing of his photographic motifs, and interweaves it with typical processes of mourning and farewell, of anger and despair – and of moving on and starting anew.
Renata, who at first could not imagine living at all without Konrad, gradually begins to become receptive to the interest of other men and is also looking for future company herself. Unfortunately, the picture that the male world gives is a tragi-comic one. This cheerful touch does the book extraordinarily well. For the male readers, there is a bit of shock and disillusionment. And you secretly think: Hopefully the picture you give yourself isn’t that bad…
(SERVICE – Sabine Gruber: “The Duration of Love”, CHBeck, 252 p., 24.70 euros, reading with the original soundtracks in Vienna’s Museumsquartier: 17.8., 8 p.m.)
1689223000
#death #Duration #Love #Sabine #Gruber