Love Notes from a German Building Site

by Adrian Duncan

Paul, a young Irish engineer, follows his girlfriend to Berlin, and begins work on the renovation of a commercial building in Alexanderplatz. Wrestling with a new language, on a site running behind schedule, and with a relationship in flux, he becomes increasingly untethered.

Set against the structural evolution of a sprawling city, this meditation on language, memory and yearning is underpinned by the site’s physical reality. As the narrator explores the mind’s fragile architecture, he begins to map his own strange geography through a series of notebooks, or‘Love Notes’.

This is at once a treatise on language, memory, building and desire, relayed in translucent Sebaldian prose in a voice new to Irish fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Novels, Germany

216 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2019

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This unusual novel is set in contemporary Berlin. An out-of-work Irish building engineer goes to Berlin with his Irish girlfriend, whose parents are emigrants to Ireland. This is a highly unusual novel, which was a perfect read for me. It partly focuses on language - learning it, using it in a specialized work environment, and the "peculiarities" of German. As a multilingual person, and a linguist, this aspect of the novel was greatly appealing.

As a toddler, I simultaneously learned English and German. My father was a military officer stationed in Bremen. In order to support employment of German citizens in the post-was environment, three monolingual Germans were assigned to my father - a driver, a gardener, and a housekeepers. They were the source of my German knowledge. We also spent two more years in Germany when I was 11-12 years old, and we had daily German lessons in our DOD (Department of Defense) school. Although I can follow social conversations to some extent now, Duncan's description of communication on his worksite reminded me that it is a challenging language. I have also learned that despite being fluent in Spanish for daily communication, a well as my academic field, when I have Spanish-speaking contractors at my house I tell them I do not know the names of many of the things related to household repairs (many I don't know in English).

This novel creates an impression of Berlin, although most of the main character Paul's experiences of Berlin involved drinking coffee, and beer, and visiting museums with his girlfriend. He has a deep affection for her, and being in Germany exposes other facets of her personality, and skills. Paul struggles on the worksite, with unreasonable demands and deadlines.

This may not be a book that immediately appeals to some readers, but it is indeed a gem.

[Liina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whan an unexpected little gem of a book. The Irish author, Adrian Duncan, worked for years as a structural engineer before going to university again to study fine art. This is his first novel.

It is about an Irish engineer Paul working on a building site in Berlin. The work-life is interluded with meetings with his girlfriend Evelyn.

For one thing, it is an interesting glimpse of how a building site works. Like an ants nest, there is always something going on and it seems nervous and chaotic. But of course, the reality is, there is order and supreme control over everything.

Reading about it was almost a physical experience. With quite laconic prose injuries, grave hangovers, sleeplessness and other bodily experiences are described. And then abruptly they change to a Sunday morning with Evelyn. Muted sunshine, her quiet tiptoeing in the apartment to make the morning coffee, bedsheets warm form sleep, an anticipation of a leisurely day. The contrast between those two lives lived by Paul is staggering. He needs to transform from being vulnerable and open to being decisive and strong in the building site.

At times the novel becomes tedious with its descriptions of construction but then something so unexpectedly beautiful is thrown in. So raw and honest about life, that you need to put it down, stare into the middle distance and think about what you just read.
For example on moving to another city with his girlfriend after the building project is done, Paul says: "It occurred to me that it didn't matter if we never made it to Cologne, because hoping about life, however briefly, with another person is enough."

[Chris Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Notes from a German Building Site

You have to give a lot of credit to this book for the originality of its conception. It reads as a memoir-cum-journal, combining a ‘nuts and bolts’ account of work on a Berlin construction site with diverse reflections: those arising from the narrator’s grapple with rudimentary German, or those which take flight from basic engineering concepts; the difference between ‘elastic’ and ‘plastic’ failure is an example that has stayed with me.
It’s an enjoyable journey and one I finished at pace. There’s a real sense of a milieu that, for most of us, exists only behind shuttering and safety barriers; Adrian Duncan is a sensitive writer, with depth of poetic resources.
This is a first novel — and there are weaknesses. The ‘flights’ of philosophising are not as compelling as they need to be; the lists of German words (the ‘love notes’ of the title) become a tiresome superfluity after a time. Above all, there really isn’t a plot — beyond the progress of the construction project; the book is less a story than a bundle of anecdotes, and perhaps as a result, the ending is a bit lame.
On the other hand the real interest of the novel — the love between the narrator, Paul, and his girlfriend, Evelyn, is underplayed. Duncan writes beautifully, and tenderly about love, and yet for much of the story, their story is in the background. I feel here, he may have been let down by his editor: there’s a better novel trying to get out. However, that shouldn’t put off prospective readers — there’s much to enjoy in this book as it is.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

So... yes, I do sometimes read current fiction. Granted, not nearly as often as fiction from previous eras, but it does happen. It happened here. I had the urge to read something rather outside the realms of my nature, experience and interest. I know zip about construction sites.

But what appealed to me about this book - which did speak to my nature - was its central theme of being 'the other', the outsider. Paul (the thinly-veiled author) is an Irish engineer hired for a job in Germany. His command of the language is spotty - though his German girlfriend is, of course, fluent and, on-site, the workers (a number of them from various parts of the world) often revert to English as the shared language. Still, of course, the reigning temperament is German.

Paul decides to chronicle his experience in a series of notebooks - what he sometimes refers to as his 'love notes'. A 'love note' is not what we might initially think - though Paul does occasionally wax poetic about his girlfriend Evelyn (an art historian)... and, at one point, lovingly about his mother. Generally, Paul's 'love' has more to do with his arduous efforts in embracing the totality of what he finds himself in.

Part of that is the foreign culture, though that doesn't appear to be inordinately daunting (he rather likes it). The larger issue is the job - or, more to the point, the chaos of this particular job. If Paul's 'memoir' feels sketchy, it's mainly because the specifics of his daily routine are sketchy - to the point of being unduly irritating. It's one thing for a day-to-day operation to seem amorphously fluid; it's quite another for it to be a reflection of management that is arrogant and wanting. Bad management trickles down. (I refer you to our current chaos in 'government'.)

For the layman, Duncan's book can sometimes be a bit unwieldy. At times, the language is so project-specific that you might have to be an engineer yourself to appreciate it fully. That said, even when Duncan is being philosophical about structural principles, he can still be accessible and intriguing:

I dislike reinforced concrete as a building material. I distrust its secrets, particularly the hidden bind between the concrete and the steel reinforcement bars within. I am suspicious of the way architects employ the material to dramatically generate walls, roofs or planes of white concrete that to my mind are little more than representations of an inherited fetish begun by architects who value the mere surface-sense of concrete. I prefer working with steel or timber. These materials are more explicit, more mathematically pure to me. I can understand the intent of a steel truss holding up a bridge or a walkway or the roof of an airport building or train station simply by the way it looks, by reading along its length, letting my eye skip across its main horizontal and vertical elements, then its smaller criss-crossing struts and bracings that make small language-like marks in the spaces above me, dicing the air into planes and making frames that reasonably filter my vision.

Speaking of language, that's Duncan's other exhibited passion: the confounding elements it's made of; when it's insufficient and when it will hold; the assemblage reflecting confident vision. Like the desired result at a construction site.

[Nadene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written with clear and strikingly original observations. I loved how tangible the descriptions were, how instantly real everything became. I loved seeing the world from the perspective of an engineer's mind and seeing art in construction. I really enjoyed the descriptions of his relationship with Evelyn. The structure was brilliant. This book took me outside my own mind and I loved it.

[Annabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘It occurred to me that it didn’t matter if we never made it to Cologne, because hoping about life, however briefly, with another person is enough.’ (109-110)

The only one read both pre- and mid-lockdown.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this as part of English degree.
I have yet to fully make up my mind about it; I thought it was a clever book, certainly different, an original concept. The author writes with the mind of a mathematician. Full of angles and order in the form of lists, yet there was something about the story that just felt messy.
The author writes his characters well, inducing sympathy for those working on the site.
I didn't hate it; I just couldn't relate to it.

[John Tierney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent exploration of life, from the point of view of an engineer working on a hurried building project in Berlin. Dives into a wide range of themes from male friendship, the role of work, the world of engineering and language while giving a great snapshot of modern Berlin and Ireland. The first novel from a new Irish author and definitely a fresh voice in literary fiction.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical look at a brutalist employment. Sparse prose shot with moments of beautiful reflection. Contrast of cultures and backgrounds skilfully realised. Evelyn and Paul struggle to relate when they remove themselves from Ireland to Berlin both settings with a history of violence and migration. A novelist in control of his material

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Verisimilitude for life in Germany.

Generally, being an ex-pat is hard. Germans are a strange lot and having your vocabulary vanish by about 90% is humbling. I can't imagine living in America with the same amount of English as I have of German.

[Shrinidhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5/5]

Love Notes from a German Building Site is narrated by Paul, an Irish engineer working under a contract in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. This protagonist is a semi-autobiographical character created by author Adrian Duncan.

This book is an excellent and a daring debut. Daring, because of the unconventional narrative style filled with meditations and well-meaning digressions. The notes and musings wrap themselves like cotton candy around the plot, which, like the stick, holds it together while being the least important aspect.

Read more about the book here - https://dublininquirer.com/2019/06/12...

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

tore through this, really engrossing and serious about serious and Material things in a way that i wish more writing was. structurally doing very interesting things with the philosophy of the narrator, or as the text goes on, what the narrator seems to feel as his own limitations as an architect. very good

[William]

Smart, but read a bit like the output of a creative writing class. Writing was a bit emotionally disengaged and journalistic without seeming to have a point to make by being written in that style. Unlikely to return to this.

[Peter Allum · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memorable debut novel; poetry in the building trade!

Paul, a young unemployed Irish engineer, finds work on a commercial building redevelopment in Berlin and is joined by his girlfriend, Evelyn. Paul is a sensitive, thoughtful young man, given to introspection about language, relationships, and the meaning that he finds in engineering. He is ill-suited to the peripatetic life of a project engineer, which involves physical discomfort (cold work cabins, on-site injuries) and mental stress (long hours, last-minute deadlines, and the collateral damage from onsite management rivalries). Paul also starts to question the inherent limits of engineering: it is a remarkable discipline for understanding the complicated (where the separate strands of complication can be isolated and modeled using simple analytical tools) but it is not well-suited to approaching complex problems (such as art, relationships, life).

Evelyn, dissatisfied with her early career in finance, has studied art history and found a position as assistant curator at an art museum in Cologne. While Paul works on the construction project in Berlin, she visits Cologne to meet her future colleagues and for training. The enjoyment Evelyn finds in her new career contrasts with Paul's sense of being overwhelmed and out-of-place. The unstated subtext of the novel is Paul's turn away from engineering toward the writing that he does in his spare time.

As a debut novel, parts of Love Notes work well; others less so. Duncan writes very convincingly about the mix of excitement and anxiety inherent in early relationships, new jobs, new countries. Duncan effectively uses the world of commercial engineering to retell the old story about the artist's perennial struggle to find their place in the world. Duncan shows great potential, and I look forward to reading his subsequent works. (I was prompted to order Love Notes by an intriguing Financial Times review of Duncan's latest novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky.)

The "three-star" rating here was biased by sections of the novel which worked less well for me: the short digressions on the German language with lists of connected words, and the many sentences of untranslated German.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always felt that the workplace deserves more attention in fiction, and it was with that in mind that I picked up this debut novel. It centers on a young Irish structural engineer who has taken a contract job to work on redeveloping an old building in Berlin into a fancy electronics store. It's not a straightforward story with a recognizable plot per se -- it's a more ruminative enterprise, delving into connections in the German language, the protagonist's childhood, his relationship with his girlfriend who has moved to Berlin with him, and more abstract ideas about art, structure, and how we perceive.

The building project forms the framework, as chapters dip in and out of the tasks, logistics, and challenges of the day-to-day work (the author drew upon his own experience as a structural engineer working on European projects). You get a sense of the odd piecemeal nature of the various subcontractors coming in from England and Ireland, skilled laborers from Ukraine, and the criminally underpaid unskilled laborers from Bulgaria. Elements of this flash to life -- such as the unspoken artistic installations the protagonist and a colleague on the project trade off on, or the description of interminable project meetings and their petty power plays . One of the interesting stylistic choices made has to do with the protagonist's shaky grasp of German -- in recurring instances, various people speak, cajole, and berate him in that language, which is rendered with no translation or explicit explanation.

The story is also a carefully controlled portrait of a man approaching middle age in fear -- fear of losing the woman he loves and fear of not knowing what he should be doing with his life. It's hard not to read the descriptions of the couple wandering arm in arm through snowy Berlin, or other landscapes, and not feel the dread hovering at the back of his mind that it could all disappear tomorrow. The writing itself is precise and controlled without being cold, and full of ideas if not entirely sure what to do with them. It's such an intensely personal book that I'm curious to see what comes next from the author.

[♡ venus ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love Notes from a German Building Site was an interesting read. On one hand, I loved the way that the characters were described throughout the course of this book - they all felt very realistic, and the way that the author writes about little emotional epiphanies was wonderful to read as well. On the other hand, all of this was bogged down by the dense technical jargon used for the majority of this book. Perhaps it's a matter of perspective, but as someone with no experience in engineering, I found a lot of the construction a bit hard to follow. I feel like this book would be better enjoyed by someone with a background in engineering, and a bit of experience in German, as many of the conversations in this book are in German, too. It was only a short read, so it wasn't too bad, but I don't think I was the intended audience for this book.

[Mary Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read anything like this before. Paul is an engineer who moves to Berlin from Ireland with his girlfriend Evelyn to work on a building site. The descriptions of the intricacies of the actual building are interspersed with the difficulties of the German language terms for building materials. The juxtaposition of Paul’s life with a mainly male workforce and his life with Evelyn which exudes tenderness runs parallel with attempting to grasp the nuance of the German language. Well worth the effort.

[Dorian Frayed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul an engineer follows his girlfriend to Berlin. She ends up going to Cologne for work and he spends a winter building a new store in Berlin. The story is told in an unusual way. The narrator pensively mergers themes of loneliness, love, trying to work without knowledge of the language. There are some beautifully structured scenes that draw out to conclusions or explanation on aspects of the narrators life in Germany and in Ireland. Well worth the read.

[Yorgos P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adrian Duncan always manages to write about something banal in the most engaging way possible. There’s plenty of construction jargon, an interesting look into Berlin, and moments between the protagonist and his partner that feel so strong they could have been the main focus of the book. Unfortunately, they weren’t.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an original concept this book. The topic is working on a building site in a foreign language.
The construction industry can be brutal.
A dysfunctional workplace, burnout, a love story to both a language and a lover.

[Coco Goran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved all the little musings on structures and materials and loneliness and the geometry of the body.

My favorite quote about him looking at a wooden sculpture: “Saint George would probably like nothing more than to be touched, and disturbed from the exhaustion of his duty.”

[Tom Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great birthday gift. Never felt like annotating lines in a book before, but this made me want to multiple times. Mainly because of how relatable this story and character is to me. My introverted side really enjoyed the observations and reflections on people and places throughout. Nice!

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book here: https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2020/02/pa...

[Kai Väärtnõu · Rating 5 out of 5]

They say it is a little gem of a book. And they are absolutely right. I thank Liina Bachmann for writing about it and for bringing my attention to it. Enjoyed every line.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly creative concept. I loved it. (I didn’t like how it ended, though.)

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this but could tell it was a first novel. I thought structure and overall concept worked well but would have liked more on the relationship and yes, the ending wasn’t that satisfying.

[Hughmarshall05gmail.Com · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short novel about an Irish lad working on a site in Berlin, his relationship with his girlfriend, his work and the German language.

I really enjoyed this. An interesting concept, well delivered. Made me think of the contrast between how simple yet complex things can be in life. I loved how Paul talks about Evelyn. How he describes her kindness and contentness made me really stop and think about just being human.

An odd combination maybe, not a book I would expect to enjoy as much as I did. Might have helped that I studied engineering, love Berlin, now work in psychology, and am Irish!

[Els Willems · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read my review on Whichbook.net: https://www.whichbook.net/book/12572/...

[Ciaran McLarnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Languid, almost-mythical story told with detached calmness whilst at the same time being full of stunning imagery, simmering conflicts and intense love. Adrian Duncan breaks language down to its very building blocks between the chapters describing the building reconstruction taking place in the main narrative. Like nothing I have ever read before!!