It's been over 20 years since I read it first but it abides with me still as one of the most insightful and subtly-written accounts of bitterness and the misalignments of human love. Neatly intertwined themes of disappointments with his human beloved and his patria in a post-War West German setting that is unnerving in its descriptive immediacy ( )

Hans, the clown, collects moments in people's lives. In his pantomimes on stage he recreates these truthful moments. Everyone loves him on stage, but hates him off stage. He won't work for the family business (industrial coal), he won't marry his Catholic girlfriend, he won't study at a university, he won't be a racist like his mother...he won't submit to any abstract principle of order. Hans is a non-conformist and uncool. He ends up in the gutter, poor, alone, playing a guitar for nickles and cigarettes. Melancholy but honest.

"I watched the little boy coming along the street from the left, toward the station square, he was wet through and held his school satchel open in front of him in the pouring rain. He had turned back the cover of the satchel and carried it in front of him with an expression on his face like I've seen in pictures of the Three Kings offering the infant Jesus frankincense, gold and myrrh. I could make out the wet book covers, almost coming apart. The boy's expression reminded me of Henrietta. Dedicated, oblivious, exalted." (page 113)

"I once watched Mother go secretly into her storeroom in the basement, cut herself a thick slice of ham and eat it down there, standing, with her fingers, hurriedly, it didn't even look disgusting, only surpising, and I was touched rather than horrified.'
(page 233) ( )

The german postwar. The classes society, with its religion --- the essential couldn't be missed. The great hypocresy. But about all, the delicious literatue from this genius. A delight. ( )

This book was my selection in the potentially short-lived book club. It follows Hans Schnier, a depressed clown, who "suffers from monogamy" and doesn't believe in God or much else. The story takes place in Post-Nazi Germany, therefore a broken Germany trying to deal with its collective past. Hans is depressed because his lover, Marie, who is a devoted Catholic has left him to marry another Catholic. He can no longer effectively perform and moves back to his hometown of Bonn. The story fluctuates between Hans' current state of despair over Marie and what he imagines her new life to be like, his current encounters with his family and past acquaintances, and memories of his life with Marie and as a successful clown. He also remembers his debates with the Catholic group and his comparative honesty and purity in juxtapostion with their teachings. This story is often bleak and sad, but also includes elements of humor and critiques of nearly everything bourgeois. ( )

The protagonist is the alienated son of a privileged German family just after WWII, who lost his sister to the patriotic defense of the motherland, and he now makes his living as the clown of the title. His struggles verge on the fey and self-absorbed, but somehow become emblematic of the plight of Germany (and in fact all of Europe) after the war. ( )