Almost Everything Very Fast
On the face of it, this is a present-day story about a father and son. Albert is nineteen and has just finished high school near the Bavarian orphanage where he grew up. He’s now come home to Königsdorf to take care of his father, Fred, who has only a few months to live. Chronologically, Fred is older than Albert, but that’s not the case mentally: Fred operates as a child, with all the positives (an enduring sense of wonder) and negatives (a lack of mature reasoning) that circumstance encompasses. Albert is in for a summer of adventure in the town sewers with Fred, with the crazy neighbor Klondi, and with his first girlfriend, Violet, all of which are matter-of-factly related. As Albert becomes obsessed with finding out about his mother, he and Fred dive into personal and geographic history.
Interspersed with the narrative of the present are chapters about the history of the insular village of Segendorf, which for centuries held “Sacrificial Festivals” at which inhabitants threw their most beloved possessions into a bonfire. The community was built on a series of rituals and mores untouched by the advancing outside world; this folkloric tale touches on incest, murder, and Fred’s family origins. The weaving together of these two story lines melds the past with the present, the archetypal with the mundane. Kloeble has invented two fascinating worlds that are based just enough in reality to make readers wonder how much is truth, and how much could only happen in a story by the Brothers Grimm. The characters are captivating, the atmosphere tense, and the descriptions fascinating. Kloeble’s quirky, dark, and heartbreaking novel is difficult to put down, and impossible to forget.
