Georg M. Oswald Im Himmel (In Heaven) Rowohlt Verlag, September 2003. 192 pp. ISBN 3-498-05035-4 Georg M. Oswald's novel is set in the affluent environs of Starnberger Lake near Munich, and is narrated in the first person by a twenty-year-old lawyer's son called Marcel König. It starts with Marcel's arrival at a private boarding school where he decides to use the free week before lessons commence to write about his summer vacation. As he begins writing, he notes that the events that he is about to describe are seemingly insignificant, yet in fact they relate to big human issues such as money, love and betrayal. Marcel's story is that of a wealthy young man - he goes clubbing, smokes pot, lazes in the pool and plays golf at the club. The real drama lies in the tensions underlying these events, and it builds up in the closing two chapters where an account of a wedding party in slow meltdown is followed by news of the bridegroom's suicide. Marcel's narrative begins at the start of his summer holidays. Having failed his final exams, Marcel lies brooding in his darkened bedroom, until his irritated mother sends him on an errand to the neighbours to get him out of the house. This minor domestic event turns out to be of crucial narrative importance, for the excursion marks the beginning of Marcel's acquaintance with a family even wealthier than his own, whose goings-on he observes with the curiosity and distance of an outsider. The bored mother is having an affair with a young man called Tom, who is also sleeping with her daughter Britta -- who in turn is engaged to the doomed bridegroom, Gerry. The extra-marital affairs, business manoeuvrings and father-son conflicts seem to bother no one until the moment of tragedy arrives. This is an elegiac book that mourns the loss of youth and the loss of innocence. It describes the passing of an era, but points to a future that is at best uncertain. The younger generation reject the social and financial ambitions of their parents, but offer nothing in their place. A tale of poor little rich boys everywhere.