I chose this one, being honest, because it was the shortest. It’s a long time since I last read something in German – probably at least six months – and I feel like I’m getting a bit rusty. Plus I actually enjoyed the relative novelty of reading in English with my Akunin book (as opposed to months of stuggling through ‘La Lada Tambureto’ in Esperanto), so I felt a bit luke-warm about more foreign language reading. Happily, once I got into it however, German came flooding back to me and I started to enjoy it

The action takes place in an unnamed town in the DDR. In fact, Braun wrote and published the novel in the DDR, several years prior to its downfall. The main character is a girl called Karin who has just left school and is about to enter the world of work. She comes from a family who have a strong sense of duty towards the state. Both her father and her mother are very concerned with being politically correct, and Karin has been brought up to respect the authority of the state and to want to serve it. Karin’s father is some sort of local government official, in fact, and it is in this role that one day he comes to her and tells her she needs to split up with her boyfriend Frank. It has come to his attention that Frank is under investigation for some (unspecified) illicit activities.

Frank seems on the face of it to be rather a bad sort. His family, when we later meet them, are rather unconventional, his father is seemingly permanently drunk. There are allusions to Frank already having spent time in prison, and all in all his background sounds a bit wild. Nevertheless, Karin seems to believe that he has turned over a new leaf, and has no evidence to suggest that he’s about to become involved in something criminal. Furthermore, not only does she loves him, he appears to love her almost obsessively, and there is nothing she less wants to do than terminate their relationship.

Karin is therefore plunged into a difficult inner conflict. Her parents are very important to her, and if she stays with Frank she risks alienating them completely, as well as perhaps ending up with her social reputation tarnished. She thinks about it long and hard, and in the end she decides to do what her father wants and dump Frank

Poor Frank is rather upset, and Karin’s resolve soon weakens. The new job she is due to start at a local newspaper is based in his home town, and before too long they’ve met up and reconciled. Frank claims not to be involved in any dodgy activities, and the only thing either of them can think of that might be arousing suspicion are some letters he recently received from a friend in the West. They’re innocuous enough though, and it hardly seems grounds for so much fuss. Karin settles into her job and begins to enjoy it. Ultimately she moves in with Frank and falls pregnant by him.

Her parents are outraged and continue to put pressure on her to end the relationship. Once news of her personal circumstances spreads, pressure is put on her professionally too. Karin’s boss at the newspaper gives her an ultimatum, a choice between her job or the relationship, and Karin is utterly confused. At first, she thinks he must be joking. When it transpires that he isn’t, she genuinely doesn’t know what to do. She views her job at the newspaper as her way of contributing to society, and she has been brought up in such a way as to believe this is of the utmost importance. Were she to lose the position, her only way of contributing would be to take a job in a factory, difficult for someone who is already four months pregnant. Following more pressure from her parents she cracks and walks out on Frank.

Oh dear To cut a long story short, Frank is rather a highly strung sort of chap, and after taking a dose of sleeping pills he sticks his head in a gas oven By a stroke of amazing good fortune he manages actually not to kill himself, but instead falls into a coma. The doctors have no idea whether he will ever wake up again, and Karin feels highly responsible. She’s lost her job anyway, and there follow many pages where she mopes about in a confused sort of distress. Frank eventually wakes up, though I find it ambiguous as to whether he still retains all his mental faculties, and then with little warning, the story abruptly ends. I guess that’s why it’s called “Unvollendete Geschichte”.

As you can see, it was a rather sad story and not one you’d want to embark on if you were already feeling depressed. It was written in a rather curious way, with very short sentences and key words or phrases being written in block capitals every few pages. Beyond the fact that living in the DDR was stressful, I’m not entirely sure what the message was supposed to be. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I didn’t enjoy it – it held my attention, was easy to understand, and passed the afternoon – but it’s not a book that I’ll be reading again in a hurry!