KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck — reviewed by Stella

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Michael Hofmann)

What is this idea of utopia? Or fortune? Or a moment that passes ungraspable? In Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Winner, Kairos, the personal and the political are intertwined. It's the late1980s and the GDR is on its last legs. The society, with its face to the East but its ears and eyes impacted by the sounds, smells and occasional taste of the West, is unravelling. Katharina and Hans meet on a crowded bus. When the former leaves the bus, he follows. It’s raining and the underpass gives them shelter. Katharina is 19, a student, intelligent and attractive. Hans, a writer, is married and in his 50s. It’s not his first infidelity, but it is her first love. Whatever way you view this relationship, the power lies with Hans. The cards he holds control the situation, and even when his wife temporarily kicks him out, all remains on his terms. The borrowed apartment is an idyll — a moment of pretend. Hans will always return to his wife, and his loveless marriage. The duplicity is startling. On the family summer holiday, Katharina is close at hand in the country awaiting Hans’s bike rides and afternoon retreats from his family. She waits for him, dresses, and behaves as he instructs. And this obedience to his desires, despite her misgivings, only accelerates over the following years as the relationship becomes increasingly chaotic, with Hans’s manipulation and violence at its centre. What draws them together is a moment, and what will pull them asunder is that also, a moment. For it is Katharina’s supposed betrayal that strikes them both down. The moment that slipped by cannot be grasped again. And here, in the tumult, is East Germany. Erpenbeck lets us travel back — walk the streets, visit the cafes and theatres — to the fascination of a possibility which became a lie. Here is the idea of a better society, stretched taut. For here, look askance, we see the manipulation and the malice of political structures that fail to live up to the dream. Erpenbeck gives us an allegorical novel of ordinary lives and an intense relationship. Kairos is a book of two boxes. Archives. Notes, receipts, journals and diaries. Cassette tapes (of accusations), books and records. Threaded into the novel are authors, plays, music, architecture; shaping and forming our awareness of place and time. The first box/section is a meeting of minds and hearts, of a relationship with possibilities and the hopes of a society that is comfortable in its own skin. The second, an awareness that all is not right — deceit and despair, and recklessness, have created a chaos which is all-encompassing, personally and politically. The novel draws you in, despite your misgivings about the relationship, and Erpenbeck’s language is emotionally taut. There is a crispness in her sentences, reflecting the excitement of this new thing. As chaos ensues, Erpenbeck again uses language, tone and pace, to best advantage to relay a bone-weariness, but also the disturbance and confrontation of revolt, and the opposing inclination to hang tightly on to the status quo. Here the passages are longer, the sentence structure more convoluted, and doubt is creeping along the lines. The final pages are ambiguous, but surprisingly satisfying.