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faintgirl 's review for:
The Piano Teacher
by Elfriede Jelinek
I'm honestly not sure what I think of the Piano Teacher. I finished it a couple of months ago and I just can't figure it out. Erika teaches piano in a conservatory in Vienna, and she's a cruel and exacting teacher with little respect for her pupils. By the time you figure out she's a teacher though, you've already met her mother - a controlling brute who manages every aspect of her daughter's life. When Erika can, she escapes to porn shows and public parks known for "indecency," watching others engage in relationships of the kind her mother will never let her have. When one of her older pupils makes it his mission to take her to bed, Erika becomes consumed with the relationship, the bizarre ideas she has about sex from her nighttime wanderings, and it all ends very badly.
I'm not sure if it's because a lot of the so called perversions described earlier in the novel are actually pretty acceptable these days, or because a lot of the trouble Erika has with Walter we recognise now in young people who've grown up with easy access to porn of all kinds, but I wasn't as shocked as many seem to have been by this book. Every relationship in this novel is torn and misshapen, and it's difficult to plough through the darkness when there's nobody there to hold a light. A tough read, I imagine ferocious and unconventional in its time. But not one I think I would go back to.
I'm not sure if it's because a lot of the so called perversions described earlier in the novel are actually pretty acceptable these days, or because a lot of the trouble Erika has with Walter we recognise now in young people who've grown up with easy access to porn of all kinds, but I wasn't as shocked as many seem to have been by this book. Every relationship in this novel is torn and misshapen, and it's difficult to plough through the darkness when there's nobody there to hold a light. A tough read, I imagine ferocious and unconventional in its time. But not one I think I would go back to.