Miriam Böttger’s debut novel “Out of the HOUSE” – The High Priestess of Unhappiness

When you appear somewhere as a family… then you are an open book for the others.” The first-person narrator in Miriam Böttger’s tragicomic debut novel “Out of the House” makes no secret of the fact that she has the role of a daughter who is constantly dealing with one another having to deal with her whining mother was forced upon her. Her mother is a woman who believes she is unlucky. The father, on the other hand, is unable to do anything to oppose his wife, to cheer her up and motivate her. While she acts as the “high priestess of unhappiness,” he remains helpless in the position of her “willing assistant.”

The ZDF journalist describes quite amusingly how the family’s entire misfortune manifests itself in a 300 square meter HOUSE – which is always highlighted in capital letters in her text. The family had this HOUSE built after they moved to Kassel. The first-person narrator is 14 years old.

Previously, in southern Germany, the nuclear family was still reasonably happy; The mother, who was prone to theatrics, at least had friends there who would pick her up when she was depressed again. But then the work-related move back to Kassel, where my parents grew up. The mother summarizes this with the sarcastic words: “Nobody is in Kassel voluntarily… Fate throws you to Kassel or you get stranded here, there is no other option.”

The biting descriptions of the residents of this town in Hesse are somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard, whom the author explicitly names as her great role model alongside David Foster Wallace. The “Kasselans”, who, as we learn, were born in Kassel, and the “Kasselans”, who are already living there in the second generation, define themselves primarily by their ostentatious cars. They simply cannot understand “that a person, especially a man, spends his life as a pedestrian and a bus and tram user without necessity.” Here the author manages to provide a highly entertaining insight, not only into the sensitivities and mentalities of the people of Kassel, but also into the German national soul. The constant whining about an actually quite carefree and self-chosen “fate” of prosperity and security certainly sounds familiar to many readers.

You close the book with the feeling of having observed a dysfunctional family through the keyhole.

One day, however, the parents – the daughter has long since moved out and now lives in Berlin – receive a surprise offer to buy the luxurious HOUSE, which would probably mean pure happiness for large parts of the world’s population. They decide to move out and downsize.

Now the family’s luxury problems are shifting. The parents are unable to clear out the house – suddenly the “shit house” in which they were miserable for so many years appears to them in a different light. Now the mother laments, as usual, theatrically, about the loss of the “shack”. Her daughter observes her talent for being unhappy with increasing surprise. But it also becomes increasingly clear that the mother is suffering from severe depression.

The background story of the neglected post-war child, whose overwhelmed parents left the only child alone a lot, is presented and commented on quite coolly. At the latest after the first third of the novel, which moves from anecdote to anecdote, one begins to miss one or two compassionate passages – especially since the nameless first-person narrator, who claims to be an “experienced parent interviewer”, hardly reveals anything about herself.

Instead, she laments that she has the feeling that “these two crazy people were only brought into the world because they needed a spectator when injustice was done to them, a witness, a biased third party who was on their side, to whom they could express their suffering could sue or who protected them.” And when the first-person narrator speaks on the phone with her father, who is usually suffering in silence, the situation reports from the “disinformation artist who threw smoke candles” become more and more cryptic and frightening. Unfortunately, the author doesn’t provide enough details about the permanently disturbed father; the figure, like the first-person narrator, remains pale.

Finally, the daughter is forced to visit her parents again in Kassel, who are desperate about moving. And yet, in the end, the biting anecdotes about these two unfortunate people who are her parents don’t add up to a whole. You close the book with the feeling of having secretly observed a dysfunctional family through the keyhole for a while. Without much insight.

“It is what it is” – with these words the novel ends. If that’s enough for you, you’ll definitely enjoy the psychogram of these “social dyslexics.”

Miriam Böttger: From the HOUSE. Galiani, 124 pages, hardcover, €23.