A Cool, Distanced Study of Alienation

Brigitte Giraud was born in Algeria in 1960 and moved to France, where she is now a celebrated writer. Volker Kaminski read her latest novel, a story about language, identity and alienation

For a long time, German novelists were of the opinion that writing was not about tension and plot. Telling a clearly structured story was rather frowned upon. Instead, authors were supposed to concentrate on detailed descriptions, reflection and philosophical navel-gazing. This modern narrative tradition has since given way to a greater need for "stories", but Brigitte Giraud's novel seems to adhere to its original principles.

The French title "J'apprends" ("I'm learning") reflects the content fairly precisely. Nadia, the first-person narrator, lives on a suburban estate in Lyon with her family and describes her school days in great detail. At the start of the novel she decodes all kinds of words she comes across in her everyday life, as children do. By the end she is at a lyceum and has reined in her enthusiasm for learning somewhat.

Algeria as a blind spot

Between the two is a sheer endless series of lessons, of little real interest for the reader. More than once, one asks oneself why one has to read all these dry details – unbounded syllabus material – why one has to know that Nadia keeps her ring-binders in perfect order using ring reinforcement stickers.

Her first spots, infatuated notes from boys, lunchtime at home – even the tiniest detail is recorded in a kind of protocol. The narrator's view is impersonal and distanced. Neither her sister nor her half-brother have names in the text, and one can't help wondering why.

Brigitte Giraud, born in Sidi Bel-Abbès (Algeria) in 1960, already has a number of novels under her belt. She seems to have chosen the first-person perspective of a good schoolgirl very carefully in "J'apprends" for narrative reasons. Nadia has a secret; something is very wrong in her apparently so normal life. The blind spot preventing her from finding herself, which no one ever mentions at home, is her origin: Nadia's mother is Algerian. Her father left her early on and now lives with another woman and his three children.

It's not unusual for children to have to cope with their parents' separation and grow up in patchwork families with stepmothers and half-brothers. But the rupture within Nadia's family seems to run deeper. Nadia is unable to accept her stepmother, even though she seems to make an effort to win her over. And as if she had to continually express that distance, she refers to her throughout the book as "the woman who is not my mother."

Projected feelings of alienation

Yet Nadia's problem is never made really clear, despite the occasional references to the Algerian war. The distress in Nadia's existence never becomes tangible, her notes remain all too virtuous and correct. Nothing unusual happens in her life, she does her schoolwork every day, meets up with friends and wins sporting competitions. The family's life appears absolutely average and far from complicated, despite the back-cover blurb suggesting that school is Nadia's "welcome refuge from her home life."

Nadia's one-year-older sister does seem to have psychological problems; there are hints that she lives in a home for a while and only comes to visit. But the surroundings in which Nadia grows up are ethnically mixed with many immigrant children at her school, so Nadia is by no means isolated.

One begins to suspect that the author has imposed a political theme on her otherwise rather spare story, as if she were projecting feelings of alienation and loneliness onto her young protagonist. This is particularly clear in one key sentence. Nadia comments: "My mother tongue is a foreign language for me." Why does she say that? Does she mean "mother tongue" as in the language of her Algerian mother? But Nadia never comes into contact with Arabic and can hardly remember her mother. It seems that the absent mother is overly mystified.

Nadia is certainly very much at home with her native (French) language and knows how to use and dissect words. And the reader can feel this in Giraud's clear, distanced language. But one simply loses interest in Nadia's story – by the end, one is disappointed that so little of the traumatic family history on the Algerian side comes to light.

Volker Kaminski

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

Qantara.de

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