pubweekly: Fairies promise one wish—but not "immortality, health, money and love"—to each of the wretched, narcissistic protagonists in the first five stories of Arjouni's sardonic new collection. In the title story, a fairy comes to the aid of a miserable ad exec desperate to save his company from financial ruin.
no this first protag not obvsly miserable or desperate or wretched. seemed reasonable, well-intentioned, somewhat selfaware re moral hypocrisy:
p15: While Max was thinking, his sense of shame grew stronger and stronger. As if he knew that in the end, if he did make a more personal wish after all, as was clearly expectd, his thoughts were only to help him not seem to selfish to himself. Because thinking about hunger in the world was almost like doing something about it. And how many people simply ignored the plight of the starving? So that left him occupying the moral high ground. All the same, he couldn't entirely fool himself that way.
Max. same name as protag in Eagles & Angels, also German.
Max, Berlin, cafe, a fairy. agency, clients, business.
also reminisc Troll, wh is in Finland, & protag is Martes.
'urban fairy tales'. my: eros-magic. but so far, not much eros here.
pubweekly: ...tales about desperate folk at the edges of contemporary German society.
p1: When the fairy visited Max he was sitting outside Rico's Sports Bar in Berlin on a warm spring evening, drinking beer and thinking. He was meeting Ronnie for a meal an hour from now, and if he didn't finally have it out with Ronnie then who would? Because opinion in the office was unanimous: not only was Ronnie acting like the ultimate bastard, if he carried on running the agency the way he'd been doing these last few months he'd lose them all their jobs.
p13 "What do other people wish for?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. Lots of them want a couple weeks' vacation. Others want a dishwasher."
"You can't be serious!"
"Yes, I am. Dishwashers come close to the top of the list. Third or fourth place."
"What's in first place?"
"Being famous."
"But doesn't being famous really come under the heading of immortality? And a dishwasher under the heading of money?"
"Oh, think about it long enough and I guess every wish comes under one of those headings. "
"It doesn't take much thinking to work out that a dishwasher costs money."
The fairy sighed. "Listen, I didn't make the rules. A dishwasher is okay, a thousand marks isn't."
"Don't make such heavy weather of it," said the fairy, seeing Max's hand tremble slightly as he struck a match. "There's no such thing as one great, perfect wish."
...Soon Max raised his head and asked, with a small, almost challenging light in his eyes, "Suppose I wish for an idiot to stop being too idiotic to see his own idiocy?"
Once again the fairy looked surprised, but quite pleasantly surprised this time. She had been fairly sure that a man like Max would end up choosing the most expensive material thing available, as usual. There were clients who asked straight out, "What's the most expensive?" It was the dishwasher.
so, liked this first story bcs Max, who seemed rather reasonable, likeable, wishes for his bullish boss Ronnie to see own idiocy, work with him to return to earlier ideals for the company, for team work.
but then Max learns fr coworker Sophie that he himself is seen as worse than Ronnie, bcs he smooths evth over, makes himslf indispens as peacekeeper. & I suppose that Max then dismissing this as Sophie just wanting to bellyache at someone means that he himslf is unable to see his idiocy? but it's not obvs, it's unclear, subtle.
vs third story re domineering mother, just awful, evth she says fr beginning suspect: self-centered imagining self as martyr. tedious ~ to me like an obvious 'internal monologue' unreliable narrator exercise. but wait, in opening of story, son says mother is dead? then we go to narrative in mother's perspective, earlier in time I assumed. so what is the deal with the opening? maybe sth int unobvs in that...
only 1 cust rvw, wish cld find commentary on the stories.
Jakob Arjouni idiots max sophie ronnie - Google Search nichts!
Idioten. Fünf Märchen. by Jakob Arjouni | LibraryThingone rvw, auf Deutsch:
...Dadurch enthalten die Geschichten jedoch oft ein gewisses Maß an Vorhersehbarkeit - besonders, wenn schon der Klappentext suggeriert, dass keine von ihnen die Protagonisten glücklich zurücklässt. So können nur die Märchen »Im Tal des Todes« und »Happy-End« mit glänzenden Pointen überzeugen. Die drei anderen haben dagegen bloß traurige Konsequenzen zu bieten.
ggl transl: The wish fulfillment is always a turning point, the current situation but only logically continue. This includes the stories but often a degree of predictability - especially when even the blurb suggests that none of them happy behind the protagonists. Thus, only the fairy tale "In the Valley of Death" and "Happy End" with brilliant punchlines convincing. The other three, however, have merely sad consequences to offer.
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