Lange Tage (Long days)
A man tells a woman, I love you, and she runs away. A girl stops eating, another one turns wheels. A teacher corrects her lover’s letters. A stewardess flirts with a stranger on the telephone. The facts of life are being explained to a student for the third time. Twin siblings kick her aunt out of her flat.
In these stories, the silence between the words is very loud. At the centre of attention are young girls and women - persistent, taciturn and sometimes mean, yet they seem to be pliant. They all long for intimacy but fear it as well.
These are coming-of-age stories, too. Stories about a time when it’s not enough to be a witness anymore.
In crystal-clear and insistent sentences Maike Wetzel describes the confounded relationships of her characters. After her widely-acclaimed debut collection “Weddings”, “Long Days” is the new book by Maike Wetzel. It deals with young people who dip in to get to the essence of life. Not just, but love stories with great impact and poetry.
