2023-08-16 10:32:56
An octopus as narrator? To be more precise, it is his ten arms that tell the story. Are you crazy? That’s actually really great, because Luca Kieser begins his novel “Because there was something in the water” in such an agitated way, he succeeds so convincingly in the course of the daringly constructed book in telling different stories and in awakening empathy for nature as a whole and for the giant squid in particular. Tomorrow there’s the book premiere at the O-Tönen in Vienna’s Museumsquartier.
“Nature Writing” is a booming literary genre, but what Luca Kieser, who was born in Tübingen in 1992 and lives in Vienna, came up with has come up with something that has never been read before. The giant squid (Latin: Architeuthis dux), with a length of up to ten meters, is one of those sea animals that can spread fear and terror and provide material for many stories knitted out of sailor’s yarn. In fact, one comes across the novel “Jaws” right at the beginning, while reading it one thinks of “Moby Dick” and his fight with Captain Ahab in passages, and subsequently also encounters Jules Verne personally.
Of course, this doesn’t happen by accident. In the course of working on his debut novel, Kieser, together with the writer Jana Volkmann, set up a reading circle that deals with texts regarding animals, as can be seen on his homepage. “At the same time, he began studying ethics at the University of Vienna, where he increasingly specialized in nature and animal ethics.” After a long time he was primarily concerned with literary portrayals, but now the central question is “whether and if so, how, one can talk regarding creatures such as animals, plants, landscapes or the weather”. “Because there was something in the water” may well be seen as an attempt to answer this question. It has become a persuasive answer.
In landlocked Austria, sea creatures obviously exert a great fascination on authors living here. Michael Stavarić has published successful children’s books regarding jellyfish and octopuses, while last year Marie Gamillscheg made the sea walnut, Latin Mnemiopsis leidyi, the focus of her novel “Rebellion of the Sea Animals”. There, the young marine biologist Luise is researching this “monster of adaptation”, which is spreading en masse as a beneficiary of climate change.
In the case of Luca Kieser, it is initially the young intern Sanja, who works on a frozen trawler that catches masses of krill with a trawl net, who makes the acquaintance of a giant squid. This gets caught in the network and brings the whole machine to a standstill. She is supposed to take care of the captive animal, develops an inexplicably strong relationship with him and literally doesn’t let go when the container with “Ariel”, as she christened it, is transported by helicopter to another ship. The octopus returns the favor: in good time, before her fingers lose their grip, he has attached himself to her with a suction cup…
In the course of the book, which changes perspective by leaps and bounds, you also come into contact with the secret agent Damar, with fearless captains, with endless deep-sea cables, with the pulse of life and data that connects continents as well as people and animals. You get into deep and shallow waters and sometimes lose your bearings – but in the end each of the arms (two of which are developed into tentacles) has a story to tell, the “tired arm” as well as the “imaginary arm”, the “sweet arm” or the “little shy one”. And they tell stories so well that you realize that the life of the octopus has probably never been told so vividly and so closely as here.
The change of perspective finally brings the reader into contact with “our young author”. No meta level without self-reflection! “Ever since he started writing regarding his octopus,” he says, he “constantly has to admit that language isn’t really suited to depicting what’s going on in an animal.” This may be. But the auxiliary construction that Luca Kieser offered in his novel works really well.
Luca Kieser is also a poet. His first volume of poetry is to be published by hochroth münchen at the end of 2023, and a long poem has been announced for spring 2024 in the keiper edition. One can be curious. In any case, “Because there was something in the water” is not only an extraordinary book, but also a promise for the future.
(SERVICE – Luca Kieser: “Because there was something in the water”, Picus Verlag, 320 pages, 26 euros; reading at the O-Tones in Vienna’s Museumsquartier: Thursday, August 17, 8 p.m.; www.lucakieser.de)
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