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Cornelia Funke
Monday, January 28th, 2008 05:54 pmI know that as a German from Hamburg and a lover of German children's literature I should not be saying this, but I really loathe her writing.
I don't know what the woman has done to me. I think it must have been Drachenreiter (Dragon Rider). It comes with purple prose, random metaphors, a very predictable plot and boring characters. My brother had to read it for school years ago, and since my entire family loves Fantasy literature we ended up reading it together with my mother, reading it to each other in turns as we so frequently did read books together back then. All three of us weren't able to cope after the first few chapters, because every single interesting complication was immediately explained, resolved, clarified. We abandoned it half-way through, after we had checked that our theories about how it was going to end were correct (every single one was) and I never picked up a book by the woman again.
I thought that she was a local author and that that was the main reason why the school teacher had taken an interest with her.
Not so.
Suddenly, Tintenherz (Inkheart) is hyped, and people from all over the world are developing an interest in this woman whose style rubs me the wrong way so much.
So I decided to read Tintenherz, trying to see why it is so popular. I am probably not giving her enough of a chance, but something about her style and her settings and her characters just drives me up the wall and makes it impossible for me to enjoy the story. I am not sure whether it's the names, the return of the random metaphors, the book obsession which is emphasised to the point of kitsch, the extremely precocious heroine who has read novels that fit in nicely with the highly anglocentric ideal curriculum of children's literature a teenager would have read - maybe fifty years ago, or just the fact that again, the characters are... well, boring, and everything that could be potentially interesteing or suspense-creating is immediately explained away.
Maybe the book is better in English, but I have the feeling that to like this book one either has to be really, really young, or someone who doesn't have German as their mother tongue, or really willing to make a huge effort to read these books. TIME said the book was, "her most elegant and accomplished work to date" and the New York Times even had it on their best seller list, and I really, really don't see why.
Maybe I am going to like the movie better.
I don't know what the woman has done to me. I think it must have been Drachenreiter (Dragon Rider). It comes with purple prose, random metaphors, a very predictable plot and boring characters. My brother had to read it for school years ago, and since my entire family loves Fantasy literature we ended up reading it together with my mother, reading it to each other in turns as we so frequently did read books together back then. All three of us weren't able to cope after the first few chapters, because every single interesting complication was immediately explained, resolved, clarified. We abandoned it half-way through, after we had checked that our theories about how it was going to end were correct (every single one was) and I never picked up a book by the woman again.
I thought that she was a local author and that that was the main reason why the school teacher had taken an interest with her.
Not so.
Suddenly, Tintenherz (Inkheart) is hyped, and people from all over the world are developing an interest in this woman whose style rubs me the wrong way so much.
So I decided to read Tintenherz, trying to see why it is so popular. I am probably not giving her enough of a chance, but something about her style and her settings and her characters just drives me up the wall and makes it impossible for me to enjoy the story. I am not sure whether it's the names, the return of the random metaphors, the book obsession which is emphasised to the point of kitsch, the extremely precocious heroine who has read novels that fit in nicely with the highly anglocentric ideal curriculum of children's literature a teenager would have read - maybe fifty years ago, or just the fact that again, the characters are... well, boring, and everything that could be potentially interesteing or suspense-creating is immediately explained away.
Maybe the book is better in English, but I have the feeling that to like this book one either has to be really, really young, or someone who doesn't have German as their mother tongue, or really willing to make a huge effort to read these books. TIME said the book was, "her most elegant and accomplished work to date" and the New York Times even had it on their best seller list, and I really, really don't see why.
Maybe I am going to like the movie better.
