Caroline Wahl: When the quiet Baltic Sea becomes loud

We must constantly jump off cliffs and develop our wings on the way down,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut. This is also what happens to the water-loving heroines of the books by Caroline Wahl, the new bestselling author from Rostock. Last year, the 29-year-old made the most successful German novel debut with “22 Bahnen”. The story about Tilda and Ida, two sisters who grow up with an alcoholic mother, hit the heart without kitsch or pathos – and not just the young readers. This visually powerful novel with authentic dialogues is currently being made into a film. Just under a year later, Wahl followed up with the spin-off “Windkraft 17” – and is already topping the “Spiegel” bestseller list again.

“22 Lanes” was mainly about Tilda, who takes care of her sister Ida and the household and protects the eleven-year-old as best she can from her alcoholic and sometimes violent mother. At the same time, Tilda does her daily laps in the swimming pool, works and studies mathematics.

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The successor novel, which you can read without knowing the first, revolves around Ida, from whose perspective the story is told. In the end, she was left alone with her mother as Tilda left to take up a doctoral position. A decade and a half later, Ida moves out of her mother’s apartment: she is completely confused, her mother killed herself, and Ida found her dead in the bedroom when she returned from a trip. “I let mom die,” she accuses herself.

Plagued by feelings of guilt, full of sadness, but also with “lumps of anger” in her throat, she sets off for Hamburg to visit her sister, who now leads a middle-class life. Ida only takes a few favorite clothes and her Macbook with her because she started writing some time ago and a publisher has already expressed interest in a novel. But ultimately Ida feels unable to tolerate her caring sister and simply continues on to Rügen. »I thought that when I was far away, my thoughts would be quieter. “But they’re loud and they hurt,” she realizes in despair.

But Ida is lucky: she finds a bar job with Knut and, after a breakdown, is even allowed to live with him and his sensitive wife Marianne. In this way, she learns to accept support in small steps. It seems almost fairytale-like, like the turning point in a well-plotted film.

But perhaps it is precisely this element of hope flaring up again and again in a sea of ​​sorrow and the demonstrative humanity of the characters that make Wahl’s novels so successful. Even the alcoholic mother had her sweet moments. All the supporting characters also try to be there for each other in their problem-filled everyday lives: a literary breathing space in times of stacking crises.

But there is still a long way to go before Ida can see light at the end of the long tunnel full of self-blame and sadness. Similar to her sister in the previous novel, she repeatedly throws herself into the water – not into the orderly path of an open-air swimming pool, but into the sea – in a desperate search for something like salvation. »The thoughts and the pain run out of my body, into the quiet Baltic Sea and I wonder if she is loud and screaming now.«

These seaside scenes are some of the most haunting. The water metaphor seems to suit the author, who even moved to Rostock because of her love for the sea. However, when everything seems to be turning for the better for Ida, her world falls apart again. But she ultimately manages to jump off the cliff, which seems to be another ingredient of the success of Wahl’s novels.

Caroline Wahl: Wind force 17. Dumont, 256 p., hardcover, €24.