Serpent's Child By Peter Truschner

Serpent’s Child is a coming-of-age novel that is set in a farming village near Klagenfurt and in Salzburg during the later 1970s. Its sure sense of place and time and its psychological acuity suggest the intimacy of autobiographical experience that knows how traditions of patriarchal abuse and the dictates of conformity disfigure a seemingly idyllic milieu. A person of inquisitive intelligence, Truschner's protagonist observes the dynamics of dysfunctional relationships with, by turns, the dispassionate objectivity of an outsider and the tenderness of a wounded, disoriented sensitivity in search of human closeness. His story is told as a fast-paced sequence of interconnected episodes, some brief and self-contained, others recaptured at later moments and expanded in new directions as perspectives shift and attitudes and insights change. It is a vivid account, forceful in its evocation of the domestic and other social details that make every one of the outrageous and endearing characters and the drama of their psychological conflicts persuasive, and at the same time restrained by a subtle sense of self-irony and compassion. Most remarkable, however, is the narrator's invention of images. His fondness for extended metaphors and analogous similes charges his language with an explosive and at times extravagant energy and thus speaks for the continued artistic vigor of a fictional genre that has been an Austrian obsession for decades.