It's a great lightweight read for adults. The novel's being heralded as the odd one out on the shortlist for this year's Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. But you know, coming of age, friendship, rebellion - it's all in there. The narrator may not have been surprised, but my disbelief came severely un-suspended at this point. I was even willing to forgive Herrndorf for the conciliatory ending and the excruciatingly hip modern character-twist, which I thought wasn't well-prepared at all. His narrator Maik has a voice of his own but doesn't use the kind of down-with-the-kids slang that feels just patronising.
Herrndorf writes well, with an eye for detail in his settings that I enjoyed. But it's there, and it makes the rather bumbling characters and the novel as a whole more likeable. Herrndorf's humour, which I personally failed to get in his short stories, isn't the laugh-out-loud kind. After a while I stopped expecting the dramatic development we know from the beginning is coming, and started looking forward to the next absurdity. So we jump from one odd situation to the next. The "road movie" part is delightfully meandering, feasting on the bizarre characters Maik and Tschick come across - a group of cycling aristocrats, a female Stig of the Dump, an ancient trigger-happy communist. Because that last point is what makes the novel so endearing. So if you're looking for a present for a teenage nephew, forget Tschick and go for Cory Doctorow, or straight to the DVD department.īut if you want to read a good book, you could get it for yourself. Herrndorf prefers playing for laughs and constructing clever plot loops to going for that instant adrenaline rush you get in a lot of books for young adults. So the police chase on the motorway is pretty tame because that's the way things usually are - the two boys end up being chauffeured away from their wrecked car in a top-whack BMW by a terribly nice but dim speech therapist, while the police creep along miles behind in their slower car. His taste and his humour are too grown up. But Herrndorf tells his story too subtly. I mean, there's plenty of action - car-stealing, accidents, shooting incidents, police chases, all that kind of thing. Yes, even more than you are now.Īnd thirdly, there's not enough action. And every single piece of teenage fiction I've read recently has featured at least one sex scene - not necessarily Harold Robbins-style, but it's definitely a biggie.
So I read it in English for the tone and in German too. I've read a lot of YA fiction in the past year or so because it's one of the things I translate. In fact one character actually turns down sex. Which probably doesn't go down too well with readers who spend all day at German high schools. But I found this part of the book muddled - how old are the kids when, why are there dumb kids in the class, and why does one character move to the edge of Berlin when they're already surrounded by fields right out in Marzahn? It all suggested a lack of familiarity with the world of German high schools. To start with, the first main section takes place at a Gymnasium in Berlin-Marzahn. To get some more nit-picking over and done with, there are several other things that make the novel maybe not unsuitable but at least atypical for teenage fiction. That's fine, go ahead Mr Herrndorf, it's fun to spot the references and all that - but it's not going to score you any points with fourteen-year-old readers. I'm not sure whether that's because I've blanked out all memory of the book or because critics just love comparing any old thing to The Catcher in the Rye. And some of them read The Catcher in the Rye into it too - though I didn't.
Now the critics, being well-read and all that, were just as quick as me to spot the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn parallels. Tschick steals a Lada and off they go, careening around the German countryside during the summer holidays and having adventures until everything goes pear-shaped. Enter neglected poor-kid Tschick, the new boy in class and Russian to boot. Here's the story: neglected rich-kid Maik is having a dull and teenagerly time of it - unrequited crush, parents are crap, no mates, etc. Younger readers, though, are used to stronger stuff. Because the rave reviews of Tschick all seem to say that's what it is - a great YA title that adults will enjoy just as much, yadda yadda yadda.Īdults will indeed enjoy Tschick. Do critics not read young adult novels? I suspect not.
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