By Alica Ouschan
Toiling hard, rubbing badly, barely reaching the end of the month: this is more or less how the dialect word “fretten” can be translated. And this is what happens to the protagonist of the novel “Fretten” and the characters around her: they fight for their whole life.
In 2020 Helena Adler, author and artist from Salzburg, published her first anti-Heimatroman with “The Infanta wears the crown on the left”. There is now a sequel that has at least the same impact as its predecessor.
From the infant to the animal mother
With a sharp tongue, Helena Adler recounts the illusion and idyll of country life. Her language is characterized by a wise and analytical acuity, which is unusual for a character with an ignorant and socially weak life reality. Even in her first book, her stories sounded like observations through the eyes of children in the words of an adult linguist.
Fresh blood in my veins is the red thread of my stories and the blush on your face.
Eva meets photography
With “Fretten” Helena Adler is in the long list of the Austrian Book Prize 2022.
Contrary to the first part of the stories of the life of the youngest daughter of a bankrupt farmer, the protagonist of “Fretten” is no longer a child, but a young woman who joins criminal gangs that plunder villages and smuggle drugs. The reality image of a young country woman with no destination or perspective, in all her horror, takes on a new tone when the former Infanta becomes her mother.
The house looms over everything like a shadow. With the horrors of the past on her shoulders, the protagonist tries to tackle her new role as family traumas weave their way through the acrobatic sequence of visually stunning sentences.
Young and young question
“Fretten” by Helena Adler was published by Jung and Jung Salzburg.
“I built, sewed and made a mom costume, it never sleeps. It’s a mom costume, a universal maternity dress with tons of space pockets underneath that has room for planets and cookies.
The new mother’s plans have repressed the war memories of the haunted grandparents and great-grandparents, which convey a distorted image of masculinity on her son. She realizes that no matter how many times she cuts, tears and replants her roots, weeds don’t die.
Helena Adler does not work on this between the lines, but with the ugliest clarity. Helena Adler is famous for her novels, compared to Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek. In contrast to these two great Austrian writers, Helena Adler writes in a less grumpy or cryptic way, but with a clear and determined anger and gallows humor that hops on one leg at the threshold of pain.
