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Title: Rain by Karen Duve, Anthea Bell ISBN: 1-58234-179-6 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: German Misfire
Comment: This German novel is not pleasant or fun to read--nor, despite the publisher's marketing, is it particularly funny. Its protagonists are Leon and Martina, a newly married couple who share no common interests, traits, or much of a reason to be married. Leon is a dumpy undistinguished poet who is enlisted by a prominent Hamburg pimp to write his biography--and be paid well for it. With half the money in advance, he and Martina buy a cottage in Eastern Germany and move there permanently to write and live. Martina is a pretty bulimic with zero personality, who seems content to follow Leon around. It doesn't take long for them to realize that their new house is permanently damp and in need of serious repair, and that it never stops raining in their new environs. Moreover, they have weird neighbors (two sisters, one who is a very businesslike lesbian and the other who is an obese earth mother figure), a serious slug problem, and a new sort-of-pet dog.

There's definitely a lot of symbolism going on, as we follow these two unsympathetic types who move from West to East, from city to country, and gradually unravel. This might have been more interesting if there was much to unravel, but they're so incompatible and unlikable to start with, that it's difficult to really care what happens to them. Any kind of grim comedy that might be extracted from the story is offset by a few exceedingly violent and nasty scenes, including a very graphic and disturbing rape. It's shocking stuff, but since we don't really care about these people anyway, what's the point? Duve succeeds at bringing to life the depressing fetidness of the rain and the marshlands, but there are no characters or plotlines to get invested in. Readers with a keen grasp on contemporary German culture and society might get more out of the symbolism, but the outsider is left wondering what the point of it all is.