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gabitheaustrian's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
bookynooknook's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.5
bookishblades's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
peejay1899's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
adrianasturalvarez's review against another edition
5.0
I am so impressed by Clemens Meyer. This is the first of any of his work I've read and it is already influencing so much of my own writing, specifically, his interest in viewing characters across multiple planes of time.
Meyer's technique of compressing time had a few interesting consequences (well I thought they were interesting): by flattening a character's story across time, he dispensed with a common urge authors have to fulfill a narrative arc with one character's catharsis. This is especially true for short story writers. The second consequence I noticed was that in some of the stories, like my favorite, The Beach Railways Last Run, the revelatory moment of catharsis was twisted into a narrative arc for the reader. The character was already well aware of the important details of his past. So instead of reading a story about a character who develops by uncovering a traumatic origin we read a character, who is traumatized, and the mystery of this trauma is a plotted adventure sorted out between the implied narrator and the reader, and Meyer does it so effortlessly.
Technical flourishes abound in this collection but none of it would be so remarkable if the writing were clinical or if each story felt like a writing exercise. In my experience, the very opposite was true. There is a heart running through each one of these stories. I came away from the collection feeling I had just read an apt description of what it is like to be human: that we inhabit obscuring clouds of personal history and experience and slivers of political circumstance and all of these aspects of living are what we push through every day with our arms waving in front of us as we try and make sense of things.
Maybe it's the corona shelter in place talking but I found the poignant absurdities laced into stories like Broken Glass in Unit 95, The Crack, and Dark Satellites all relevant. This is, hands down, among the best fiction I've read this year. I'm excited to seek out more of Meyer's work.
Meyer's technique of compressing time had a few interesting consequences (well I thought they were interesting): by flattening a character's story across time, he dispensed with a common urge authors have to fulfill a narrative arc with one character's catharsis. This is especially true for short story writers. The second consequence I noticed was that in some of the stories, like my favorite, The Beach Railways Last Run, the revelatory moment of catharsis was twisted into a narrative arc for the reader. The character was already well aware of the important details of his past. So instead of reading a story about a character who develops by uncovering a traumatic origin we read a character, who is traumatized, and the mystery of this trauma is a plotted adventure sorted out between the implied narrator and the reader, and Meyer does it so effortlessly.
Technical flourishes abound in this collection but none of it would be so remarkable if the writing were clinical or if each story felt like a writing exercise. In my experience, the very opposite was true. There is a heart running through each one of these stories. I came away from the collection feeling I had just read an apt description of what it is like to be human: that we inhabit obscuring clouds of personal history and experience and slivers of political circumstance and all of these aspects of living are what we push through every day with our arms waving in front of us as we try and make sense of things.
Maybe it's the corona shelter in place talking but I found the poignant absurdities laced into stories like Broken Glass in Unit 95, The Crack, and Dark Satellites all relevant. This is, hands down, among the best fiction I've read this year. I'm excited to seek out more of Meyer's work.
buddhafish's review against another edition
112th book of 2021.
This is an older Fitzcarraldo publication from back in 2020, one I didn't get at the time but as I wait for their new releases I am also backtracking with their products. Their newest, Dark Neighbourhood didn't reach me, lost in the post somehow, and so I settled with the similarly titled, Dark Satellites. Meyer is apparently at the top of the game in contemporary German literary fiction, and this collection proved some serious narrative skill. The stories are all disorientating, disturbing in some way, with ethereal like prose. I've often seen it described as 'impressionistic' and this is a good word for it too. Meyer's stories float around in time with no tags or warning, paragraph to paragraph we are thrown into a character's past, present or future and often the writing is so abstract that we lose the thread of the narrative itself; but reading, we get the impression that this isn't necessarily a problem. Losing ourselves in the narrative feels like part of the experience of the stories, which are all centred around German satellite towns, strangers meeting and becoming friends and then parting. "The Distance", one of the stories identified on the blurb, is about a train-driver who hits a laughing man on the tracks. It then unravels into the narrator's own childhood watching trains go-by, into the present as he searches for the man's wife. I've left it unrated because trying to rate stories like these feels doubly arbitrary; Meyer writes stories that are confusing, boring, unsettling and awe-inspiring all at once. I wouldn't readily recommend this to many people but from a writing point of view alone, it is a masterclass lesson in using time and the short story form.
This is an older Fitzcarraldo publication from back in 2020, one I didn't get at the time but as I wait for their new releases I am also backtracking with their products. Their newest, Dark Neighbourhood didn't reach me, lost in the post somehow, and so I settled with the similarly titled, Dark Satellites. Meyer is apparently at the top of the game in contemporary German literary fiction, and this collection proved some serious narrative skill. The stories are all disorientating, disturbing in some way, with ethereal like prose. I've often seen it described as 'impressionistic' and this is a good word for it too. Meyer's stories float around in time with no tags or warning, paragraph to paragraph we are thrown into a character's past, present or future and often the writing is so abstract that we lose the thread of the narrative itself; but reading, we get the impression that this isn't necessarily a problem. Losing ourselves in the narrative feels like part of the experience of the stories, which are all centred around German satellite towns, strangers meeting and becoming friends and then parting. "The Distance", one of the stories identified on the blurb, is about a train-driver who hits a laughing man on the tracks. It then unravels into the narrator's own childhood watching trains go-by, into the present as he searches for the man's wife. I've left it unrated because trying to rate stories like these feels doubly arbitrary; Meyer writes stories that are confusing, boring, unsettling and awe-inspiring all at once. I wouldn't readily recommend this to many people but from a writing point of view alone, it is a masterclass lesson in using time and the short story form.
apurvanagpal's review against another edition
4.0
3.5⭐️
Dark Satellites by Clemens Meyer (translated from German by Katy Derbyshire) is a collection of dark, unsettling and oddly intimate fragments from lives of the people at the very margins of society.
Set in contemporary Germany, it centers on themes of isolation and loneliness, how it feeds on similar emotions and seeks it out of the people they meet. Through the eyes of Meyers characters, we see how chance encounters lead to a basic turn of events, affecting their lives minutely yet deeply. It almost makes us reflect upon the unpredictability of life and the people we meet, the baggage we all carry.
The stories were short, crisp, a little strange sometimes but deeply impacting.
My favourites from the collection were ‘Late Arrival’ which tells the story of a brief friendship between two middle aged women, a late night train cleaner and a hair cutter, who bond over wine in the early hours of the day and long for human connection.
I also really liked ‘Broken Glass in Unit 95’ in which a man recounts his short lived affair with a young refugee woman fleeing from the Soviet empire, in a string of broken dialogues and I thought it was beautifully put together.
Like any other collection, it had a couple stories I struggled with but most of them were really memorable. I thought the translation was fluid and perfectly captured the characters’ psyche.
I highly recommend it and give it 3.5/5 overall.
Dark Satellites by Clemens Meyer (translated from German by Katy Derbyshire) is a collection of dark, unsettling and oddly intimate fragments from lives of the people at the very margins of society.
Set in contemporary Germany, it centers on themes of isolation and loneliness, how it feeds on similar emotions and seeks it out of the people they meet. Through the eyes of Meyers characters, we see how chance encounters lead to a basic turn of events, affecting their lives minutely yet deeply. It almost makes us reflect upon the unpredictability of life and the people we meet, the baggage we all carry.
The stories were short, crisp, a little strange sometimes but deeply impacting.
My favourites from the collection were ‘Late Arrival’ which tells the story of a brief friendship between two middle aged women, a late night train cleaner and a hair cutter, who bond over wine in the early hours of the day and long for human connection.
I also really liked ‘Broken Glass in Unit 95’ in which a man recounts his short lived affair with a young refugee woman fleeing from the Soviet empire, in a string of broken dialogues and I thought it was beautifully put together.
Like any other collection, it had a couple stories I struggled with but most of them were really memorable. I thought the translation was fluid and perfectly captured the characters’ psyche.
I highly recommend it and give it 3.5/5 overall.