Scan barcode
A review by anneklein
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
challenging
dark
funny
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I have never read writing like this. It was long-winded but not quite prosaic or purple; it rather felt like a frantic stream of consciousness, which worked so well to immerse the reader in the life of Erika Kohut, our main character. I also really liked the third person present tense, it's so effective when it comes to communicating immediacy even when it's omniscient. The way I interpreted it, we had a degree of omniscience most of the time, but every so often we'd go into Erika's head and experience her memories and feelings, the specific moments a present thing would remind her of, and it was so vertiginous that it left me reeling and needing a deep breath. Truly a very experiential (and experimental) style of writing.
The degree of fucked-up-ness was not as high as I was expecting, probably because the blurbs and reviews had warned me to it already and I had gotten myself ready for something even heavier. Still, it was ugly, all right. And in terms of rawness, definitely one of the crudest books I've ever read. It's so complicated in that there is no black-and-white morality, everybody is susceptible to both causing and receiving harm from everybody else.
Some moments that stood out to me were the public transport scene (writing, characterisation, sheer surrealism of it all, insane comedy), the flashbacks to Erika's childhood (and her fraught relationship with her mother!), and the music rehearsal in the gym. Up until then I'd been more or less ok with what was going on, but that whole scene was so wild that it made me go "damn, we're really in it now, huh?".
The ending is so sad, and I think perfect for what the story was trying to say. A big part of Erika's character is that she is stuck between becoming the best she can be, and becoming the worst she can be. And not being able to do either is what makes her such a pitiable character. I also appreciated that Jelinek does not push any particular interpretation of the topics she brings up through her characters: Erika has her own flawed opinions, Klemmer has his own flawed opinions, Mother has her own flawed opinions, and through the use of the third person we realise they often say really apt things, and yet their actions rarely match what they preach, or they have other perspectives that seem to us insanely wrong. Topics such as women's autonomy, capitalism and property, one's artistic purpose and career, and relationships as a whole are discussed by the characters, and they are no more likely to offer an insightful perspective as they are to completely misread a situation.
Overall this was such an incredible reading experience on many levels, and I'm grateful that pieces of literature such as this one exist, for all the ways they make us confront the darkness of humanity.
The degree of fucked-up-ness was not as high as I was expecting, probably because the blurbs and reviews had warned me to it already and I had gotten myself ready for something even heavier. Still, it was ugly, all right. And in terms of rawness, definitely one of the crudest books I've ever read. It's so complicated in that there is no black-and-white morality, everybody is susceptible to both causing and receiving harm from everybody else.
Some moments that stood out to me were the public transport scene (writing, characterisation, sheer surrealism of it all, insane comedy), the flashbacks to Erika's childhood (and her fraught relationship with her mother!), and the music rehearsal in the gym. Up until then I'd been more or less ok with what was going on, but that whole scene was so wild that it made me go "damn, we're really in it now, huh?".
The ending is so sad, and I think perfect for what the story was trying to say. A big part of Erika's character is that she is stuck between becoming the best she can be, and becoming the worst she can be. And not being able to do either is what makes her such a pitiable character. I also appreciated that Jelinek does not push any particular interpretation of the topics she brings up through her characters: Erika has her own flawed opinions, Klemmer has his own flawed opinions, Mother has her own flawed opinions, and through the use of the third person we realise they often say really apt things, and yet their actions rarely match what they preach, or they have other perspectives that seem to us insanely wrong. Topics such as women's autonomy, capitalism and property, one's artistic purpose and career, and relationships as a whole are discussed by the characters, and they are no more likely to offer an insightful perspective as they are to completely misread a situation.
Overall this was such an incredible reading experience on many levels, and I'm grateful that pieces of literature such as this one exist, for all the ways they make us confront the darkness of humanity.