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Thomas Glavinic
Die Arbeit der Nacht
Carl Hanser Verlag,
August 2006,
396 pp
Jonas wakes up as usual one morning in his home city of Vienna, but something has happened: no reply to his text messages, crackling on the radio, white noise on the TV, the internet pages he wants to look at are all unavailable. He walks to the bus stop to go to work. And realises there are no buses, no cars. No, it's not a holiday, he's the only human being left in Vienna (and, as it turns out, in Austria, Europe and the world). A nightmare vision? Indeed it is - and what follows is an expert exploration of fears, first of the absence of other people, then of other people, and finally, and most devastatingly, the fear of his own inner self. One of the most frightening aspects of this novel is the anxiety even in the absence of any visible violence: in the 400 pages, there are no murderers, no torture, and yet the reader's skin crawls. This book follows a tradition in horror writing and the films David Lynch excels at. Jonas becomes aware that something is happening at night - things have moved in his room - and he sets up a video camera to try to capture the reality of these bad dreams. In so doing another personage is created - the Sleeper, who gazes malevolently into the camera, a self Jonas seems to have little control over. He tries to make sense of the situation, and feels a need to act, so towards the end of the novel embarks on a journey to Scotland where his girl-friend had been when 'it' happened. The journey is an extension of the nightmare - he has to walk part of the Channel Tunnel and when he falls asleep at Dover wakes up several steps back on a road trip that solves nothing at all. Eventually Jonas can see only one way out of this void… With echoes of Marlen Haushofer's work, Glavinic has created a novel that will stay with the reader long after the book is shut. Loneliness, helplessness, and self-sufficiency are the themes explored. A modern Crusoe touched with the creations of Edgar Allan Poe. |