Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Translated from German by Tim Mohr

221 Pages

Ratings Explanation

Language: Laden with nearly every profane word imaginable.

Violence:  Sascha locks her bedroom door each night, to avoid molestation by Vadim, her stepfather.  Vadim kills her mother, and her mother’s lover, Harry.  Peter, threatens to rape Sascha.  Sascha leaves the stranger inebriated in the park with Peter and his cronies.  Sascha imagines ways to kill Vadim.  Ultimately, Vadim hangs himself.  Sascha shoots out windows in the project.

Sexual Content:  Maria, Sascha’s guardian, has an affair with Grigorij.  Sascha and Felix lose their virginity to one another.  Then, Sascha has sex with Volker, Felix’s father.  Sascha has sex with a random stranger.     Oleg describes in minute detail scenes from the porn films he’s rented.

Adult Themes:  Vadim emotionally and physically abuses his son, Anton.  Vadim is a misogynist.

Summary

The heroine of this novel is Sascha Naimann.  Sascha was born in Moscow, but now lives in Berlin with her two younger siblings and until recently, her mother.  She is precocious, independent, street-wise, and since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan.  Unlike most of her companions, she doesn’t dream of escaping from the tough housing project where they live.  Sascha’s dreams are different: she longs to write a novel about her beautiful, but naive mother, and she wants to end the life of Vadim, the man who brutally murdered her.  Sascha’s story is that of a young woman consumed by two competing impulses, one celebrative and redemptive, the other murderous.  Sascha relates the struggle between those forces that can destroy us, and those that lead us out of sorrow and pain and back to life.

I found this book to be completely depressing.  I couldn’t wait to read an uplifting and interesting book after this dark novel.  Sascha seems to believe the path to”finding herself” is through sexual experimentation.   This is an unremarkable philosophy.

©2011 The Literate Mother