The Piano Teacher by Elfriede JelinekMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Disclosure:
I have come across this Novel during a search for Austrian Feminist Literature, I pick the Piano Teacher as a winner of Nobel Prize for literature. I own an eBook of this version, translated in English.
My Plot:
The story happened in Vienna, a grown up girl from France teach the Piano lessons in the Vienna conservatory. Our Protagonist called Erika, and lived together with her controlling mother in a moderate apartment. The relation of Erika with peoples differ from several aspects. Her relation with her mother get worse and some time a big change took place in their relation. Erika's relation with her student get tougher. Her sexual orientation and her psychological depressions were the main obstacles behind her relation. Erika decided one day to befriend one of her students called Walter. this latter was a punctilious student inside her class. Erika invited him one day to her house, and told him the truth that she is a Masochist girl, and love the self mutilation, Waler grow uncomfortable in his relation with Erika especially with the heavy control that was imposed upon him, One day Walter visited Erika in her apartment and raped her even with the presence of her mother. The following day Erika conducted a celebration in the Theater of Vienna, for her surprise she found that Walter was satisfied with what he did to HER. Erika stuck herself with a knife in the shoulder moving out of the theater.
Positive and Negative Aspects:
The main positive entity in the whole story is that "the Piano Teacher" was a combination between psychological and material elements in the events of the whole work, in fact it was the first work I read where the protagonist suffer from psychological depression. Reality was that the writer get lucky to make the readers lived and feel the problems of all Characters inside the story, it was amazing to explore the Phobias and Paraphilias of each Character. but the amazing thing was that Protagonist was in the center of scope to all these problems. "the Piano Teacher" may represent the new form of the 21 century novel due its newly Characteristics. Concerning the nature of Language I admit that I read the Novel in English, so I didn't get the chance to review it in its original language.
My Personal Reaction:
Personally this was the first Novel I read about the Protagonist suffering from psychological depression, I really enjoyed the techniques that the writer used to expose the fear and the psychological reactions of all the Characters, actually it was far more better than the Techniques used by D.H. Lawrence. The events in the story were amazing and expressing, besides, simplicity of the narration dominates more than complexity. anyway I enjoyed reading this story, and that's the reason behind voting it with 5 out 5.
Recommendations:
This genre of Literature is new born, so I recommend people to take caution especially when reading some sexual arousing scenes inside the story, I don't recommend minors to read it.
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