Alison McGhee has given her new youth book a minimalist, concentrated form. Each of the hundred chapters consists of a hundred words. In the English original from 2018 as well as now in the excellent German translation by Birgitt Kollmann. They are arranged on the right side, while on the left the chapter numbers can be read as Chinese characters.
In the short, diary-like notes, the first-person narrator Will describes what he saw on his forays through Los Angeles or whom he met on his way to his temporary job in the “Dollar Only” store. A leashed, aggressive dog, for example, or the little “guy” who waits every day for five butterflies to perch on a garage wall at the same time. Above all, however, the sixteen-year-old tries to come to terms with what had once exploded his teenage life: three years ago, his depressed father killed himself, later Playa, his friend from carefree days in kindergarten, was raped after a school party. Since then, she has holed up at home.
Much of Will’s deliberations ends with a question that seems to address us directly. “Do you know what I mean?” Another time “Do you understand?” or “Is that supposed to be the reason? For locking the door and raping her? As if that made sense? An explanation?” The questions express his helplessness in the face of inexplicable events. At the same time, they encourage readers to make up their own minds.
“Go. Go. Go. Out with the day. Go. It’s almost like a mantra.” Running, which can be read anywhere today, has therapeutic potential. Will senses this intuitively when he starts doing it one day after his father’s death. In flip-flops and the David Bowie-printed shirt he found in his father’s drawer. At the same time, it connects him with his mother, who as a nurse with many night shifts cannot look after him. Their favorite song is Bowie’s melancholy “Space Oddity” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/. “Music is the refuge of the lonely”, his father always said.
“What I leave behind” is the original name of the book. The title promises a brighter future that is beginning to emerge for the two youngsters in the starry sky of Los Angeles. At the same time he alludes to the traumas of the past. Will’s manic running initially bears traits of bypassing and running away. The feelings of guilt, which he also carries with him because he left the school party earlier than Playa, weigh so heavily that he consistently avoids the route to her house.
But also the German title “How to leave a space capsule” sits.
Out into the invisible air that means the world
He not only refers to Bowie’s space song, the text of which runs like a leitmotif through the book: “Ground control to Major Tom / Your circuit’s dead / There’s something wrong.” It also fits the fate of all those who are looking for an exit in this quiet book, which, despite the tragic events, cannot be called anything other than delicate, which has almost meditative traits over long stretches: out of their protective housing and thus out of isolation , “out into the invisible air” that means the world.
Will succeeds in this by secretly making everyone who is important to him happy with little things from the “Dollar Only” shop. He calls them “ghost gifts” that express affection and compassion. And, although small, are strong gestures of the absolute will to survive. (from 12 years)
Alison McGhee: How to get out of a space capsule. Translated from the English by Birgitt Kollmann. dtv, Munich 2021. 208 pages, 12.95 euros.