Long Days

by Maike Wetzel, Lyn Marven (Translation)

Demonstrating an unflinching insight into the internal worlds of adolescent men and women, this collection of stories presents an array of memorable characters. From a young woman seeing a dead body for the first time to a sister watching her anorexic sibling transform, this anthology delves deeply into people’s lives, capturing their fears and frustrations against a backdrop of pressures at pivotal moments. In the background, an over-eager teacher might be explaining "the facts of life" in unnecessary, lurid detail, but in the foreground, students are taking secret, drastic measures. A gymnastics class may be limbering up for an impressive display, but in reality, its diet-crazed girls faint in alarming numbers. With pared down but insistent language, this compendium achieves a poise and clarity, presenting tales of humanity that are as captivating as they are conflicted.

122 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2003

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into this book. It is made entirely of short sentences. Strange prose. First person. I tried to imagine the narrator of Prefab Sprout's I Trawl The Megahertz. This worked for a while. But the short disjointed sentences kept coming.

I left my copy on the bookshelf in the top floor guest apartment of 2 Rue de Mulhouse, Paris. How many long days will it be there?

[Gretel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of gloomy and unsettling yet compelling stories. Wetzel's world is a world in which characters live in limbo and children are forced to grow up too fast.

Favourites:

Sleep: After her mother's breakdown a child goes to stay with her grandmother and soon becomes aware of her mother and grandmother's unequal power dynamics.

Poor Knights: A disturbing tale, in which the narrator and her partner stay with the eccentric but good-willed Gudrun and slowly take over her apartment.

Witnesses: The narrator and her boyfriend stumble upon a car wreck and the mangled corpse of her ex, which digs up old memories she would rather forget.

Englightenment: Not much happens in this one but it is a great character study. A high-school lab class take a day trip to a clinic. Weirdly compelling.

Frosted Glass: Enna tries to find meaning in her life when she joins a drama school and she soon starts an odd relationship with the head of the stage school.

Shadows: The best story in the collection, exploring the effects of a teenage daughter's eating disorder on her family. Told from the point of view of the daughter's sister, this story is packed full of imagery that made me feel uneasy. The ending is also a complete surprise.

At times this book feels alienating and too detatched, and sometimes the relationships between characters just do not make sense, such as in Two Voices - why are these characters even speaking? Other People's Windows is another story I didn't enjoy, as I found it rather hard to follow and with the characters' lack of names it wasn't obvious if a new character had joined the fray.

[Carolin · Rating 2 out of 5]

In dieser Aneinanderreihung von 9 kurzen Erzählungen geht es oft um Verlust und Schuld. Alle haben einen traurigen, melancholischen Unterton, der mich als Leserin oft unwohl hat fühlen lassen. Gefühle erzeugen kann die Autorin also sehr gut, auch die Bilder, die sie heraufbeschwört, wirken lebendig, die Umgebung, der abgebröckelte Putz, die dreckigen Dielen etc. greifbar. Trotzdem empfand ich die Stimmung als zu drückend, den Schreibstil manches Mal als zu aufgesetzt, um die letzten drei Erzählungen noch gründlich zu lesen.

Am eindrücklichsten war für mich "Geister", eine Kurzgeschichte um die Familie eines an einer Essstörung erkrankten Mädchens, am wenigsten gefallen hat mir "Zwei Stimmen", ein Telefonat zweier Menschen, die sich nicht kennen.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

At turns creepy and unsettling, then mundane and slice of life.