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The Old Child and The Book of Words
A child is found standing on the street, with an empty bucket in her hand, and no memory of her name, her family or her past. Elsewhere, a girl grows up surrounded by familiar faces - a wet nurse, a piano teacher, a gardener, a best friend and a distant mother - but soon finds them slipping mysteriously from her life. In the company of these girls, we are compelled to tread the uncertain and spiky terrain of memory, where words are dropped like clues to reveal what has been hidden, forgotten or erased.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
7 people are currently reading
154 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Erpenbeck
31 books1,161 followersJenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967 in East Berlin) is a German director and writer.
Jenny Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.
From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 (with a production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a world premiere of her own piece Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Aachen, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zaide in Nuremberg/Erlangen.
In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: in 1999, History of the Old Child, her debut; in 2001, her collection of stories Trinkets; in 2004, the novella Dictionary; and in February 2008, the novel Visitation. In March 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her son, born 2002.
Jenny Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.
From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 (with a production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a world premiere of her own piece Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Aachen, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zaide in Nuremberg/Erlangen.
In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: in 1999, History of the Old Child, her debut; in 2001, her collection of stories Trinkets; in 2004, the novella Dictionary; and in February 2008, the novel Visitation. In March 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her son, born 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 8, 2017
Jenny Erpenbeck is now better known for her more recent books The End of Days and Visitation. This edition contains two of her early novellas. They share certain similarities, they are centred on girls who are never named, and concern forms of loss and identity, and both must to some extent reflect Erpenbeck's childhood in East Germany.
The Old Child (3.5/5)
This is an austere and rather unsettling tale of a girl who appears to have lost her memory and taken into a children's home, where she effectively effaces all traces of her personality while obeying rules and the commands of her classmates rigidly.
The Book of Words (4.5/5)
This is much richer, darker and ultimately disturbing. Initially it appears to be the world as seen by a young child, trying to make sense of words and idioms, but it soon becomes clear that something is wrong.
Set in an unnamed South American country that is largely based on Argentina, much of what passed for normality starts to disappear - people, shops, railways, and though the various stories the girl is told are initially taken at face value, it eventually becomes clear that the girl's privileged parents are deeply involved in the disappearances and atrocities.
This is a dark allegorical fable whose anonymised setting and use of German nursery rhymes, folk sayings and other idioms suggest that it is as much about Germany as about Latin America. As in Visitation she also uses repetition very effectively. The folk material is so untranslatable that the translator felt it necessary to add a postscript explaining the contextual background.
PS One minor irritation is the font used in this book - it uses a hyphen that is almost diagonal and there are a lot of hyphenated words, so this is rather distracting...
The Old Child (3.5/5)
This is an austere and rather unsettling tale of a girl who appears to have lost her memory and taken into a children's home, where she effectively effaces all traces of her personality while obeying rules and the commands of her classmates rigidly.
The Book of Words (4.5/5)
This is much richer, darker and ultimately disturbing. Initially it appears to be the world as seen by a young child, trying to make sense of words and idioms, but it soon becomes clear that something is wrong.
Set in an unnamed South American country that is largely based on Argentina, much of what passed for normality starts to disappear - people, shops, railways, and though the various stories the girl is told are initially taken at face value, it eventually becomes clear that the girl's privileged parents are deeply involved in the disappearances and atrocities.
This is a dark allegorical fable whose anonymised setting and use of German nursery rhymes, folk sayings and other idioms suggest that it is as much about Germany as about Latin America. As in Visitation she also uses repetition very effectively. The folk material is so untranslatable that the translator felt it necessary to add a postscript explaining the contextual background.
PS One minor irritation is the font used in this book - it uses a hyphen that is almost diagonal and there are a lot of hyphenated words, so this is rather distracting...
July 29, 2013
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/5680608...
I have reviewed both books separately. This review deals specifically with The Old Child.
The Old Child is by far the weakest link in the current Erpenbeck/Bernofsky trilogy. Not that the book was a bad read, just not up to the same quality standards of The Book of Words and Visitation. Not even close. Of those latter two mentions, of course, you could say Erpenbeck came from the seed of Walser and Bernhard, but in no way is it permissible or advised by me to mention the same for this thin offering, The Old Child.
I am a big fan of Jenny Erpenbeck. Perhaps an even bigger fan of Susan Bernofsky, the gifted translator of both Erpenbeck's and Robert Walser's literary works. But I missed something here, or these two missed their chance for feeding it to me. Maybe I needed to be force fed with this one. OK, so our fat girl just didn't want to grow up, or she didn't want to face the truth of her existence, or accept the lot she was handed by the powers that be? And that fourteen year old kids are mean and the grownups are too? I am making this novella sound immature and undeveloped because I think it is. I am also admitting that perhaps I myself am not sophisticated enough to "get" what Erpenbeck was getting at. But there was nothing in the personality of the book that made me want to make a new friend, ugly and grotesque as she possibly was. I was made to feel nothing for any of the book's characters. I was dead as she was dead and all my reading died too soon. I never got anywhere. I was taken to no higher plane. I was not scared of anything, nor did I need to feel courageous. There was nothing taken from me but my time, and that is too much to take from me without a proper payout in return. I will not boycott the next Erpenbeck I am offered to read, but I will insist on there being some extremely positive or important critical review that makes me first have to want to read it. It isn't enough to drop the anointed names of Bernhard and Walser to me, and then offer some mystical or spiritual idea that Erpenbeck was spawned from them. Not with this work. Not on my time.
I have reviewed both books separately. This review deals specifically with The Old Child.
The Old Child is by far the weakest link in the current Erpenbeck/Bernofsky trilogy. Not that the book was a bad read, just not up to the same quality standards of The Book of Words and Visitation. Not even close. Of those latter two mentions, of course, you could say Erpenbeck came from the seed of Walser and Bernhard, but in no way is it permissible or advised by me to mention the same for this thin offering, The Old Child.
I am a big fan of Jenny Erpenbeck. Perhaps an even bigger fan of Susan Bernofsky, the gifted translator of both Erpenbeck's and Robert Walser's literary works. But I missed something here, or these two missed their chance for feeding it to me. Maybe I needed to be force fed with this one. OK, so our fat girl just didn't want to grow up, or she didn't want to face the truth of her existence, or accept the lot she was handed by the powers that be? And that fourteen year old kids are mean and the grownups are too? I am making this novella sound immature and undeveloped because I think it is. I am also admitting that perhaps I myself am not sophisticated enough to "get" what Erpenbeck was getting at. But there was nothing in the personality of the book that made me want to make a new friend, ugly and grotesque as she possibly was. I was made to feel nothing for any of the book's characters. I was dead as she was dead and all my reading died too soon. I never got anywhere. I was taken to no higher plane. I was not scared of anything, nor did I need to feel courageous. There was nothing taken from me but my time, and that is too much to take from me without a proper payout in return. I will not boycott the next Erpenbeck I am offered to read, but I will insist on there being some extremely positive or important critical review that makes me first have to want to read it. It isn't enough to drop the anointed names of Bernhard and Walser to me, and then offer some mystical or spiritual idea that Erpenbeck was spawned from them. Not with this work. Not on my time.
Read
April 9, 2015'If I were made of paper, first my dress would catch fire, then my legs, then my arms, then my head, basically all the parts farthest from the centre, and only then would my stomach start to burn, and the little pink buttons above my heart, and finally the heart itself, the most interior part of me. All these things would turn black and keep flying up into the night as long as they continue to smoulder, and only after the air had cooled them down would they return to earth in a rain of ashes. But I am not made of paper, my mother repeats. Nonetheless she pulls me away any time I want to touch fire, saying: Hot.'
September 10, 2015
Two totally different stories under one cover - I assume they have always been published this way, rather than this being a small compilation of the author's work. Fittingly, there are two distinct possibilities here. One is that the book is an important and profound work of massive complexity and deep meaning which I am too much of a dullard to understand. The other is that this is a work of unrelenting tedium which sets its readers to climb a sheer cliff face without providing any of the traditional handholds (physical description, dialogue) that enable them to get a grip on the plot, and which requires a translator's note just to explain where the bloody thing is set. Yes, it's one of the two but I genuinely don't know which. What I do know for sure is that I didn't enjoy it.
December 19, 2019
The volume contains two novellas on simialr themes of girls growing up, memory and distancing from the society they live in. Both are unsettling, but compelling.
The Old Child has a girl found and then brought up in a "home" with other children.She has no memory, even of her name, and instinctively aims not to be noticed. She is muffled or blurred from the world around her, though gradually comes to learn its ways and how to get on. Later there is illness and accelerated aging. The book won't be pinned down, but certainly one reading is various societies' (including Germany's given the author's nationality) numbness and shock from their recent histories, and a painful letting go of innocence.
The Book of Words has a girl in an unnamed country among her small circle of family and friends, though it is never quite explained where they are. Unsettling things happen to both girl and reader as language and people shift or disappear. Again, deliberately set no particular place, the reader can overlay various or no interpretations upon it. For me it hints at living in oppresive societies, but with a self-distancing and denial, and there are of course numerous times and places this applies to.
This is strong writing and translation (by Susan Bernofsky), which makes the reader sit up and listen even if they don't like or fully understand what they are hearing.
The Old Child has a girl found and then brought up in a "home" with other children.She has no memory, even of her name, and instinctively aims not to be noticed. She is muffled or blurred from the world around her, though gradually comes to learn its ways and how to get on. Later there is illness and accelerated aging. The book won't be pinned down, but certainly one reading is various societies' (including Germany's given the author's nationality) numbness and shock from their recent histories, and a painful letting go of innocence.
The Book of Words has a girl in an unnamed country among her small circle of family and friends, though it is never quite explained where they are. Unsettling things happen to both girl and reader as language and people shift or disappear. Again, deliberately set no particular place, the reader can overlay various or no interpretations upon it. For me it hints at living in oppresive societies, but with a self-distancing and denial, and there are of course numerous times and places this applies to.
This is strong writing and translation (by Susan Bernofsky), which makes the reader sit up and listen even if they don't like or fully understand what they are hearing.
June 1, 2019
Well, this is one of my favorite authors so I enjoyed this novella about a homeless Jane Doe sent to a Children's Home and her odd life there. But the story is bizarrely peculiar. One reviewer says "eerily brilliant," and I agree. I can imagine the keen intellect it takes to write this, but I would guess few would enjoy it.
August 31, 2019
What a confusing book. Innovative certainly. I didn’t find it easy to interpret. It wasn’t really until the last few pages that you got any real sense of where it was headed and even then it was obscure. Not an easy read both in it’s subject matter or it’s delivery.
July 30, 2016
These two novellas simply did not speak to me. I was rarely engaged, won't remember them, and am glad to be finished.
February 7, 2022
Two very different novellas in one book. The first one I found the 'girl' quite endearing and I was rooting for her, until the end which was very unsettling and made me shudder. The Book or Words took an even more disturbing turn at the end, and generally throughout the story too. At times I struggled to know what was really happening and what was in the 'girls' head, but the end kind of confirmed my fears about her parents lives. I would say Book of Words was better in the imagery, the folklore and the almost fable like lessons. It felt very Nazi war criminals in Argentina, but I don't think the setting was necessarily rooted in history and served more as a lesson. Both disquieting novellas in their own right
September 28, 2025
Two unusual and, frankly, unsettling novellas, quite different in content, but both centred around identity and loss: in The Old Child, voluntary loss through the shedding of self, possibly as the result of undisclosed trauma, and in The Book of Words, involuntary loss through torture, fear and totalitarianism.
As with everything Jenny Erpenbeck writes, the books are absorbing and challenging, in spite of (or because of?) the neutral, controlled use of language.
Highly recommended.
As with everything Jenny Erpenbeck writes, the books are absorbing and challenging, in spite of (or because of?) the neutral, controlled use of language.
Highly recommended.
February 2, 2020
Two novellas. 3 and 4 Stars respectively. Both allegories sharing common themes of memory (or maybe rather repression of memory). Slightly too obscure for my liking. Erpenbeck's later novels (I still have Go, Went, Gone waiting on my TBR) are faboulous books, and it was interesting to experience these early efforts.
January 20, 2021
Engaging, disturbing and surreal. It is what you perceive it to be; which will be different for each reader.
May 7, 2024
I was handed this by a friend so gave it a read. I'm not typically a harsh critic but I found this to be very boring and amateurish. I don't really understand what hype this novella got. Both stories were tiresome to read, convoluted, taking a lot of energy to finish it and it felt so descriptive that it was hard to see where the stories were going or if there was a story at all! Whatever deeper meanings there were, I am not entirely sure what they are? A review I read accurately describes this, "a mental exercise rather than stimulation."
January 1, 2018
A child turns up in a town and she is taken to the local police station with a bucket and no name, can not remember where her past or where she came from. The girl is then sent to the local orphanage which shares the ground with a private school.
It is a good novel, probably the old child being a representation of East Germany. This was her first novel and it isn't as good as the other two novels I read of hers prior to this, The End of Days and Visitation but did show her potential.
The book of words I liked a little less than The Old Child. This is set in South America (google search on one reference indicates most likely Argentina) and there is an underling of something very sinister in the background.
Both are good stories, just after visitation and end of days, not as good in comparison.
It is a good novel, probably the old child being a representation of East Germany. This was her first novel and it isn't as good as the other two novels I read of hers prior to this, The End of Days and Visitation but did show her potential.
The book of words I liked a little less than The Old Child. This is set in South America (google search on one reference indicates most likely Argentina) and there is an underling of something very sinister in the background.
Both are good stories, just after visitation and end of days, not as good in comparison.
May 28, 2014
Van haar gelezen Atropa belladonna en andere verhalen
Heel leuk en interessant ook over Siberië
Heel leuk en interessant ook over Siberië
September 15, 2015
Twee medio-leuke verhalen vertaald uit het Duits. Interessante settings die net lang genoeg zijn om je vast te pakken.
Leuk boekje, 6,5/10
Leuk boekje, 6,5/10
August 9, 2021
read for class, but erpenbeck has a beautiful way with words
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews