It is not easy to put yourself in the shoes of a teenager who is just before they come of age. Nils Mohl tried it, the result is an artistic, mysterious chaos.
In his previous works he has often dealt with growing up, the search for orientation, but also the disorientation of young people. For his best-known book, the youth novel “Es war once Indianerland” (2011), he received the German Youth Literature Prize and the Oldenburg Children’s Book Prize. His artistic and linguistically innovative style was praised. The laudator Sabine Ludwig said at the time: “Read this book, enjoy it, it is different, it is special, it is simply terrific.”
The author gave free rein to his enthusiasm for experimentation, puns and word creations.
Mohl writes on his website that he started a book 15 years ago with the working title: “Hello, my name is Klimbimson Kreuzer”. Now this “Opus Magnum Mini” has been completed and published under a new title: “To those we don’t want to become. A teenage symphony”. In it, he has taken his sophisticated style to the extreme. Has given free rein to his enthusiasm for experimenting, playing on words and creating new words. The book design, including the illustrations by Regina Kehn, is very special. Each page is designed individually. Youthful drama with a wink. At the center of the book is the developing I, an I in search of its place in the world. My name is Klimbimson Kreuzer and it feels like living like Robinson Crusoe (whose original family name was Kreutznaer) on a desert island. Even the corruption of the name makes it clear that, despite all the youthful drama, Mohl does not forget the joke.
You immerse yourself in the stream of consciousness or thoughts of the young protagonist who is about to turn 18. The countdown is running. But there is a great fear of becoming what one never wanted to become, namely like the adults, in whose lives “pseudo-duties” prevail and the “boredom escalates”. He writes against this fear. In this sense, the book is also a symphony of horror. It’s hard to say what kind of genus it is. It is not a narrative work, but neither is it a volume of poetry, rather a very associative diary or notebook. The narrator, the lyrical self, which at the beginning was conjured up like a prayer wheel and defined as a “changing room”, in which “one tries on new lives like clothes”, writes free lyric, experimental poetry, but also puzzles, writes short prose texts, gives Chat histories and short messages again, fictitious advertisements and lexicon entries are inserted. The principle of collage prevails. Everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden.
As a reader, it’s not always easy to follow. Orientation is sought, but not always found. As in real teenage life, there is chaos in the head. And Mohl put this chaos on paper. The book, like growing up, is a challenge, but one that is worthwhile. (from 14 years)
Nils Mohl: To those we don’t want to become. A teenage symphony. Verlagsanstalt Tyrolia, 2021. 168 pages, 17.95 euros.