JimZ's Reviews > S. S. Proleterka

One of the good things about being on GoodReads is I would never have heard of this book, I do not believe, had not a GR friend given this book a very good review. At least that is how I think I ended up ordering this book. I was not disappointed.

What writing! For only 122 pages…just remarkable. It to me sort of read like a mystery novel (although I do not read them...but does Simenon count as mystery? Then I do). I do not know the protagonist’s name but then again I do not believe it is given in the novel…she is referred to as “Johannes’ daughter”.

I took notes on this book as I was reading it…because the author would drop a really important fact about a character in the novel here and there. It was not an easy read...you could not read it rapidly because you would miss important things.

If I talk too much about the book then I give away spoilers. I will just make a couple of observations.

Death and illness permeated this book.

I can’t think of anybody in this novel who was nice. If they smiled (I do not remember if that verb was used in the novel) it was an icy smile.

At the end an old man (he is married and has his wife, an old woman, at his side) wants to see Johannes’ daughter after he had written her a letter with some disturbing information. Whether it is true or not was a bit hard for me to discern. Johannes’s daughter would have preferred not knowing what the old man told her. After all, he was supposedly a lover of her mother after the mother left Johannes…and the mother on her deathbed could have revealed to Johannes’s daughter what the old man revealed but did not (are you following me?). She asks the old man “Why now?” In other words, why does the old man tell her this after Johannes is long dead? Why not sooner? By now Johannes’ daughter is near 50 years old. The last time the old man had seen Johannes’ daughter was when she was four years old when her mother had taken her to a house where a 5-year boy, dead (cause of death was running in front of a car), was laid out in order for mourners to pay their respects. The old man and his wife say the boy is her brother (fathered by the old man and Johannes’ daughter’s mother). And this is said, and it is the last lines of this sparse haunting bleak dark book:
“He the scientist had a ready reply: because now we are becoming vergesslich, forgetful (but also wahrheitsliebe, for love of the truth). They are losing their memory. That is why they had to speak now. Not tomorrow. They have revealed their secret out of precaution. Thanks to this precaution I have met the man who says he is my father. He had left sheets of paper in all the rooms. Hundreds of sheets. Upon them it was written I was his daughter. He wanted it to be known at all costs. If anyone had torn up one sheet, another would have remained. And another again. As if sheets of paper were suddenly sprouting from the floor like ghosts. He has talked for hours of love of the truth. Gradually he forgets everything. Even his daughter.

The last chapter…you can’t skip a single word! What prose!