Die Gespenster von Demmin- The Ghosts of Demmin- by Verena Kessler

This impressive début novel by Verena Kessler offers us a different way of looking at tragic historical events. The story takes place in the town of Demmin in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern, one of the former East German Länder, which saw one of the largest waves of mass suicides in Germany in May 45 as the Red Army approached from the East. Exact numbers will never be known but it’s estimated that up to 1,000 citizens killed themselves and their families. This event was effectively hushed up by the East German authorities after the war: until reading this novel I’d heard neither of Demmin nor the mass suicides.  The refreshing approach to these events here is that the story is told from the point of view of 15 year Larry, born and brought up in Demmin, aware in vague terms of what happened in May 45 but with enough of her own adolescent angst to be dealing with at the same time. It raises the question of what it’s like for people who live on in places which have seen terrible tragedies and loss of life, and how subsequent generations make sense of what happened decades earlier right before their door.

We first meet Larry hanging upside down from an apple tree in her garden. She’s timing herself to see how long she can stay there, one of the physical endurance tests she’s set herself à la David Blaine, her hero and role model. It’s essential that she works on her endurance as she wants to be a war correspondent, and the intrepid persona and fearless reactions of the war correspondent ring through her head as she goes about her everyday activities of shopping for her Mum at Netto, or negotiating her way round the Rechtsradikale hanging out in the town centre. She’s an unusual girl, at odds right now with her longstanding best friend, Sarina, who’s discovered boys, and her mother, who’s single, desperate to find a new partner and often careless of her relationship with Larry. She gets on well with older people, whom she comes across at the cemetery where she works a few hours a week, litter-picking and tidying up around the graves—including of course the mass grave from May ᾿45.

Larry’s story is interleaved with that of her neighbour, Frau Dohlberg, a 90 year old woman living alone. Her observation of her neighbours triggers memories from the past—Larry’s antics on the apple tree reminding her of a neighbour who hung herself from that very tree. It’s been agreed that she’s struggling to cope and needs to go into a home. She’s told by the brightly cheerful staff that she doesn’t need to bring anything with her, just a few clothes, and so spends the next few weeks packing up her home to be disposed of by a house clearance firm. These sections are poignant indeed, almost painful to read—the packing away of her life into cardboard boxes feels like she’s acquiescing in her own disappearance, almost like a longer, more-drawn out form of suicide. And indeed the items she’s packing away are all vehicles for memories—her mother’s best china tea-set that she’d bring out on Hitler’s birthday, the linen tablecloth her mother hung at the window in May ᾿45 to conceal the bridges destroyed by the Red Army.

The plot develops with Larry’s mother deciding to move her new boyfriend, Benno, into the house, much to the disgust of Larry, who responds by staying away from home and upping her endurance tests. She attempts to rescue a swan stuck in the ice on the river and is herself rescued by Timo, a former pupil at her school, now working at Netto. Despite Larry’s initial gaucheness they become friends of sorts—they’re both oddballs, after all—and share their curiosity about the events in May ᾿45. This then leads to them trying out some very dangerous activities together with the dubious help of YouTube videos, which I won’t detail here. Partly because I don’t want to spoil this very tense section of the novel, but also because at this stage in the book my maternal reader cried out ‘Please, no!’ and I can’t bear to revisit this section.

 Larry’s increasingly crazy challenges don’t change things with Benno, whose large, cheery presence and innumerable packing cases are taking over her home. Larry shows her disquiet further by secretly organising a trip with her Dad, a long distance lorry driver, effectively staging a running away from home. Now at one level I thought this section was introducing just too much new material into the plot, but actually I enjoyed the accounts of the truckers’ restaurants, the details of overnighting in the lorry and of course we’re introduced to the character of Larry’s father and understand further why her parents broke up many years ago. This relates to their own family tragedy, the accidental death of Larry’s brother at the age of 3, which has been hinted at earlier in the narrative, but only really openly discussed now, on this trip, for the first time.

A dramatic final denouement on this road trip sees Larry returning home and her mother talking openly for the first time about the loss of her little boy. There’s a kind of release here, a greater understanding between Larry and her mother, which enables Larry to let go of her fantasies of war reporting and endurance challenges, to grow up. This is mirrored by Frau Ratzlow, the cemetery caretaker, showing her the register of bodies in the mass grave. The sombre list is partially reproduced in the text. Many bodies were unidentified. It’s as if the final message of the book is a plea for openness, for frank discussion of life’s tragedies, both the national and the personal, for us to be able to heal, to both live with the past and to put it behind us.

Verena Kessler expertly weaves together the present with the past here in the two intertwined narratives. They’re joined not just thematically but linguistically too, with single words like water, stones, appearing at the end of Larry’s sections and reappearing at the beginning of Frau Dohlberg’s. Those cardboard packing cases feature across the narratives too—in Benno’s move in, Frau Dohlberg’s clearing out, and those sad, secret boxes in Larry’s garage whose contents are never mentioned. Yet she also achieves the distinct teenage voice of Larry with its pacey, acerbic and often humorous commentary on the grown up world and the injustices dealt her: there were moments when I laughed out loud. And she evokes brilliantly the East German small town milieu with its Plattenbau estates, supermarket life, and the ubiquitous radio game show- Guess what noise it is!- which seems to have every car driver under its spell.

I really enjoyed this novel and its thought provoking exploration of how we deal with tragic events in the past. I look forward to reading more from Verena Kessler.