Review: Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau

Stettin, 1945. In a bombed-out apartment, an eight-year old boy secretly watches as his mother is repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers.  She then takes the boy by the hand as they make their way onto a packed train headed in the direction of Berlin. When the train makes a stop, the mother hands the boy the suitcase and tells him to wait for her on the platform while she uses the restroom. The mother never returns.

This is how Julia Franck begins her terrific novel Die Mittagsfrau ("The Noonday Witch").

Why did the mother abandon her young son?  The rest of the novel takes us back to Helene's (the young mother) early childhood in Bautzen and follows her through a tragic love affair in Berlin and the unhappy marriage that brought her to Stettin.  The novel is a psychological portrait of a young woman, but at the same time psychogramm of German history.  Helene is a half-Jew, and her personal history is inextricably bound together with that of her country.  In the end, the reader achieves some measure of understanding for Helene's unforgivable act. 

I found the early childhood scenes in Bautzen – the period just before the Great War -  especially effective.  Helene's mother Selma grieved for her four stillborn sons; she was incapable of feeling love for her two daughters.  Helene and her older sister compensate for this absence of love through an incestous relationship with each other.  When in 1914  their beloved father leaves to fight in the war, Selma is driven over the edge into madness and the young girls are left to their own devices to survive. Selma's mental illness casts a shadow on both girls: Martha succumbs to addiction and Helene retreats into silence and passivity.

Die Mittagsfrau won the 2007 German Book Prize and the English translation (by Anthea Bell with the unfortunate Harlquin-romance-like title The Dark Side of the Heart) has been released in the UK (not yet in the US).

The Mittagsfrau is a figure from old east German folklore.  She appears during the midday heat to peasants at harvest and steals their children along with their sanity. 

According to the legend, the witch-like powers of the Mittagsfrau diminish if you engage her in a short conversation.  Helene loses her ability to communicate and therefore falls victim to the darkness of the Noonday Witch.  Fortunately for us, the readers, Julia Franck is able to give voice to Helene and to a terrible epoch in history.  This novel has the ring of truth. 

See my review of Julia Franck's novel Lagerfeuer.