Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur. Remember to mark clearly what the spoiler is referring to, so people know when it’s safe to open (eg what part of the book it’s referring to, whether it’s speculation, etc)
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
Similarly, if you fall behind you’re still very welcome to post in this thread whenever you get to this week’s reading. Many members will have the thread on watching and will be happy to see your posts and reply, even a long time after the club has ended.
Questions on vocab, grammar, nuance, and the like are both welcome and encouraged. We’re all here to learn, and questions very often lead to interesting insights. No question is silly or too basic.
Participate: post about anything that comes to mind: how you like the book, how easy or hard you’re finding it, speculations about future developments, thoughts on specific plot points or characters, questions on comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, culture, anything! Lively book clubs are more fun, and every question, every opinion is valid and welcome, as long as it’s phrased nicely and respectfully towards others.
I’m traveling this week and I didn’t want to carry the book with me, so I read this week’s section a few days prior. I really like the book so far, the writing style is pretty witty, and the author uses interesting metaphors to describe what’s going on. I also like the short excursions into the land of mindfulness and how our protag integrates them into his life.
For the more serious content, this week’s part ended on a nice cliffhanger, and I’m already itching to know what his shady client has in stock for him There are so many options really…
I just read the first chapter. I like the writing so far, very amusing
My German is even rustier than I thought though: I needed about as many lookups as I do in Japanese. I’m not sure if this should make me feel better about my Japanese level, or worse about my German level. Arguably I could skip most of those and still get the gist just fine, but I like not missing things, especially when humour is involved.
Two questions:
Very first paragraph, so I won’t bother to put in spoiler tags: “Gut, in der Woche darauf hatte ich dann schon fast das halbe Dutzend voll.” Does he mean that he killed six people in the next week, or something else entirely that I’m missing?
Vollassi - is this a real person whose name is used to describe a certain type? Or a word that my dictionary just doesn’t recognize?
I’ll almost definitely read more during the day, this is fun.
Yes (well, “fast”, right? So I guess probably 5 people…)
No, that’s a word but a very colloquial one.
The “voll” prefix indicates “very much”, while the second half “Assi” (I would actually write it “Asi”) is an abbreviation of “Asozialer”. This is a common insult (and when used as an insult, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is asocial but it might indicate that they did something gross and/or socially unacceptable). I also found it on Wiktionary: Asi – Wiktionary
Something about this entire paragraph is tickling my funny bone. This is a common insult people can yell at each other, exactly as @nikoru described. Calling someone an “assi” is a bit like the term “trashy” in English.
it’s a combination of “strunzen” and “blöd”. Not sure if strunzen is still in use in Germany, but it’s not in use here. Strunzen is another word for “angeben” or “prahlen”.
This is a reference to him doing breath work. Simply combining “hecheln” with the insult of “Schwuchtel”. You can pretty much combine anything this way.
Same here! I guess that means that your German is not as rusty after all
No, it’s not in use in Germany any more either. Here in this context of strunzblöd it doesn’t really have anything to do with angeben, it rather means “incredibly”. Incredibly stupid, that is.
Just to add to this, it’s an insult which is nowadays normally used towards a man who is perceived as acting (walking, talking, …) in a feminine way, or towards a homosexual man in general.
I’m enjoying the book so far, I’ve had a few questions, but most were answered in the thread. For the rest I’d have to check my copy and maybe ask later, I mostly got everything from context. I did have to look up quite a few legal terms, but that’s to be expected as the last time I was fully fluent in German, I was 7. Anyway despite this, the writing style makes the book flow fast.
My one concern is the depiction of female characters. To me so far each introduced one seems to fit a misogynistic stereotype. The uncaring wife that uses the daughter as a punishment, the old childless woman who is spiteful for it, the young incompetent (and implied stupid) woman who is only there because of nepotism. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I see your point! But if I look at the male characters, it feels exactly the same to me tbh: The tea-drinking mindfulness softie, the stupid but (thanks to his help) successful gangster client, his greedy coworkers who only managed to become partners due to their better clients… To me it feels like he has a pretty burlesque over-the-top style of depicting everybody, really. How do the characterizations of the males sound to you?
He does caricaturize everybody, but I don’t feel it’s equivalent. The therapist feels a much more positive depiction even if a bit stereotypical, he is overall a helpful and even wise figure. Of course the clients depiction is worse, but it’s mostly concerned with how it affects the main character. And for the coworkers, this might change but right now they aren’t even named characters, so I don’t really have an opinion on their depiction one way or the other, they were just mentioned in passing. While with female characters it feels to me that their negative traits unnecessarily belabored when it doesn’t even feel particularly relevant. And they fit very neatly into pretty standard and common misogynistic stereotypes.
I guess I wasn’t bothered by it because I felt this was just how the main character perceives them, not how they necessarily are. He’s pretty self-centered, after all, so anyone who gives him even the slightest trouble is someone to be caricatured and criticised. He does seem to unconditionally love his daughter, at least (she’s probably still too young to resent his ways, so he has no reason to find fault with her). As for the wife, she feels real to me. Her transformation from carefree to stressed and focused on what is socially expected of her and what is best for her young child is totally natural, as is her resentment of a husband who’s never there, physically or mentally, especially when the reason he’s not there is a morally questionable job. They are growing, and they are growing apart, unless they do something about it. In this respect, she is as real or as stereotypical as he himself is.
Everyone’s a bother to him - except those who don’t cause problems for him and his time with his daughter.
For what it’s, I also didn’t notice a difference between how he perceived and depicts either gender when I read this book. I think it’s very important to keep in mind that this is not a reliable narrator. He is, like @omk3 said, very self centered and not interested in the big picture or other people as such. That definitely shows in the writing.
I was so looking forward to reading this book (and was really bummed when we said we only start on July 8th instead of July 1st) and now I only finished the part on the last day I hope I’ll have more time next week to read the next part earlier.
And it’s a real cliffhanger to end a part at this week. I am really curious what will happen during this “Eis essen”, which will probably push him to become a murderer
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There are so many options really…
the library knew. 
I hope I’ll have more time next week to read the next part earlier.
