Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (2021)

 What a mixture this novel is. And mainly a mixture of the strongly successful and mystifying failure. It's the story of Hans, an ageing East German writer and broadcaster, and Katharina, a young East German embarking on a career in set design. Their meeting and relationship occurs in the late 80s, so we also have a portrait of the end of the East German state. The story is ostensibly recounted via Katharina looking through boxes of old documents from the time, and has each document and what it brings up as a kind of starting point for a rumination. This structure is quite tenuous, where there's nothing obvious or specific about each piece she's examining, there are only the thoughts she has, which together add up to the story. One could be forgiven for forgetting that the boxes are being opened, or things looked at. What's great about the first part of the book is the limpid picture of that political climate seen through the lens of these two; nothing particularly didactic or overweighted, just a mood emerging through the exigencies of their lives. Despite their age difference, there's excitement in getting together. And probably some thrill in the subterfuge necessary, because Hans is married with a son a little younger than Katharina. I know very little about the author, but it has a feel of being autobiographic, or at least I wouldn't be surprised to find that she had many of these experiences in one way or another. So far so good. Then Katharina goes to Frankfurt-an-der-Oder to start a job in a theatre, and ends up having a night with one of the young men also working there. Hans finds this out, and it triggers all his insecurities. Even though they've been pretty relaxed in how they've related to each other up to this point, he goes full controlling-crazy, berating Katharina for her wickedness and betrayal, and harping on the lapse constantly. This is understandable in its initial explosion. But as time goes by, nothing ameliorates or develops. He just goes on saying the same things, punishing Katharina petulantly, neither of them engaging in order to get a discussion happening which gets them to a split or a reunion. This is what I would identify as the major failure of this book. The characters as set up initially don't fulfil their arc. Hans glooms into repetition, Katharina never gets angry, never reacts with any spike of resolving intention. And given that I'm surmising that Erpenbeck "is" Katharina, what does that say about her understanding of herself, depiction of herself? For the rest of the book, Katharina emerges as a blank jelly, "receiving" the impressions of Hans and others, and not doing anything decisive. She is harped at, and cries. She feels low. She brightens again when Hans seems a little less accusing. But the feelings engendered don't lead anywhere at all really, she's just waiting passively to see what happens to her next. Hans is sending cassette tapes of grievances (!), expecting her to reply with her justifications, and she does so willingly, always going with the systems he sets up, becoming tearful about it, and then going with it again next time. Presumably in coming to these justifications she must have felt something in terms of his criticisms being unfair, some element will have been wrongly put or place emphasis where it shouldn't have been, but if these thoughts have come up she hasn't followed them, just remained a repetitive "receiver". Something in this reminded me a little of The Portrait of a Lady, and its picture of lockedness. Somehow, though, James managed to flesh out the bitter, low-lit fight between Isabel and Gilbert. Here there is just abjectness and almost no dynamic. All this time, thankfully, the cool and pointed depiction of East Germany going through its death-throes continues, which is a saving effort. There are a couple of points in the second half where there is a dip into almost-experimentalism which is a bit odd, but not too troubling. I wonder if the autobiographic part of this which I am positing created its own block in Erpenbeck. Hans comes across as a whole character, and is ridiculously childish and crazingly melancholic alongside his cleverness, whereas Katharina is not ultimately believable.