Rosalie’s mother is working at a snack stall, she will soon turn sixty and become Faisal’s wife. Rosalie is introduced to the young groom over a Sunday lunch with roast pork. Faisal’s teeth are a little tilted, he has a big family but no permanent residency. Soon Rosalie’s belly becomes round; but not by her married lover, the so-called financial shark.

Jule meets Gunnar after her car breaks down, close to the coves of Västervik. They make love behind a bush and it smells and sticks like strawberry icecream. Gunnar’s wife has lips like a duck’s beak, his child is flaxen-haired. He writes the manuals for a big furniture company. Jule’s midsummer takes her to the do-it-yourself section.

It is always love or something like it. Maike Wetzel’s stories don’t start at the beginning and don’t stop at the end, they roam the streets, they casually touch upon life. Not sentimental but funny, salted with strange despair.

„Maike Wetzel has the ability to create a very dense atmosphere in her texts. I hope these stories will reach many readers.”
INGRID NOLL (author of The Pharmacist, Hell hath no Fury, Head Count)

„Maike Wetzel’s stories and characters are torn out of the diffuse muddle of life – sharp-egdged, laconic and poetic.”
TANKRED DORST (playwright/writer/director)