Why We Took the Car

Fourteen-year-old Berlin schoolboy Maik and his Russian-born classmate Tschick find themselves left at a loose end in the summer holidays. Maik's middle-class parents are too busy with their own concerns to worry about their son, whilst Tschick only seems to have his dodgy elder brother as family support. In a "borrowed" Lada, they set off to drive to Wallachia to find Tschick's grandfather. Unfortunately, they omit to take a map, and they haven't "done" Germany yet in their school geography lessons, so finding Wallachia doesn't prove to be all that easy.

This is a very funny book, but the joke is exactly the same one as in Catcher in the rye, Adrian Mole, and (nearer to home) Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. -- we are looking at the show more world of adults from the peculiar perspective of an alienated teenage boy, who is (of course) really just an adult novelist using his disguise as a first-person narrator to poke fun at his contemporaries. Herrndorf does it very well, and adds some 21st century Berlin detail to the usual mix, with references among much else to asylum-seekers, racism, open-cast mining, industrial agriculture, computer games, Beyoncé, a left-over old Nazi (or possibly Communist) and a very discreetly smuggled-in LGBT plotline. Although it is a kind of coming-of-age novel, it always feels more irresponsible and subversive than didactic. I'm not really a fan of "YA" books, but I can see that if I were, this would have a good chance of becoming a favourite. show less

I hate that the publisher makes sure I know the circumstances this book was written under; if I dislike a book written by a dying author, that makes me feel like an asshole. If I like it, I'm forever (or at least for a while) going to wonder how much of that is me projecting what I know of the author onto the text.

That said, I definitely wound up liking this a lot more than I expected. It looks really clichéd - two bored young teenage outsiders from Berlin, a rich dork and a dirt-poor immigrant, decide to just "borrow" an old car and take off on "holiday" for a few weeks. Because why the hell not, mostly. Turns out that the adult world is a strange and incomprehensible place, and it takes more than just knowing which pedals to push to show more make your way ... Along the way through the former GDR they bump into various strange people. Or at least they think they're strange, but what do they know?

Again, yeah, you've seen this plot before, and when it's all narrated by one of the 14-year-olds it makes me even more wary. But I ended up scoffing the whole book down in two long reads, because it's just that well done. There's a hunger, a force behind Herrndorf's writing, a sense of humour that refuses to turn into comedy. The situations the boys find themselves in aren't just wacky adventures, though they initially appear that way when filtered through a not-as-smart-as-he-thinks kid's view. There's a new Europe out there, one which consists of layers of lots of old ones, and it takes more than just a hotwired Lada to understand it. Freedom's just another word for nothing, etc. show less

‘’Ever since I was a little boy my father had told me that the world was a bad place. The world is bad and people are bad. Don’t trust anyone, don’t talk to strangers, all of that. My parents drilled that into me. When you watched the local news - people were bad. When you saw primetime investigative shows - people were bad. And maybe it was true, maybe ninety-nine percent of people were bad.’’

The story starts in the police station with a frightened boy, a battered leg and quite a lot of dizziness. Just a few days earlier two boys wanted to go to the most important party of the year. An unlikely duo they were. Mike, a boy from a well-to-do family residing in the Berlin suburbs. His mother is an alcoholic. His father is a show more scum. Andrej, the new student who becomes a target because of his Russian heritage and his silence. However, the question is one: Why did they take the car?

Because of teenage love that knows no boundaries and is afraid of nothing. Because our partners in crime had to deliver a precious gift to a very special girl. And then, they needed to enjoy the taste of freedom, the carefree summer in the messy world their families have created. During their eventful road trip, they meet a family that adores trivia and Harry Potter, an old man who reminisces on love and war, a strange girl who lives alone in the middle of nowhere. They roam on streets that still bear the signs of the discrimination between the ‘’West’’ and the ‘’East’’, between the Germans and the foreigners, between the world of the adults and the universe of the children.

Wolfgang Herrndorf writes a remarkable journey of two teenage boys who need to overcome obstacles that were created by others. They take the car to see whether anything worthy exists beyond the harsh environment of teachers who seem to have been educated in the Nazi Youth during Hitler’s era, of classmates who have started formulating an excellent textbook on how to become a fully-functioning skinhead, of families that are criminally absent or criminally present. And still, through incidents that are funny and sad and messy, through moments that are heart-pounding fast or the epitome of summer serenity, Herrendorf gives us two boys that are clever and kind and able to find their way. Even in an old, stolen Lada. Rich in beautiful descriptions of the lazy suburbs, written in dialogue and prose that are both hilarious and sharp, Why We Took the Car is one more successful example of European YA Literature. In fact this is exactly how YA SHOULD be...In the end, this is not a journey about discovering yourself but about discovering the true nature of the ones around you and whether you can trust them or not. Most of the times, the answer is not simple…

‘’And just imagine: The bugs go to the bug movies! They make movies on their planet and they’re sitting in some bug cinema watching a movie set on Earth - it’s about two kids who steal a car.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com show less

Gyakorló apaként nyilván nem az az álmom, hogy a fiam 14 évesen az első életreszóló élményeit egy alkoholista orosz kamasz mellett élje át egy lopott Lada Nivában. Azt remélem, ennél azért nagyobb kontrollom lesz az eseményekre. De akárhogy is: ez egy varázslatos könyv. Tipikus "kamaszkorom legszebb nyara" regény, ami arról szól, hogy a világ egy izgalmas hely, tele kalandokkal és barátságokkal - a feladatunk csak annyi, hogy felemeljük a sejhajunk, és uccu neki. Ne együk magunkat azon, hogy nem mi vagyunk a világ köldöke, hanem teremtsük meg azt az univerzumot, aminek mi vagyunk a középpontja. Mondjuk amennyiben lehetséges, azért próbáljuk meg úgy megoldani, hogy Lada Nivát nem lopunk.

Ilyen show more Lada Nivát meg pláne nem: show less

Until not all that long ago, there were basically only two kinds of German-language fiction being published – prettty much every released book fell either into the category of very cerebral, highly modernistic literary fiction, or that of trashy, iredeemably bad pulp, with all the huge middle ground between the two extremes being covered by translated books, mostly (and rather unsurprisingly) from the United States. This has somewhat changed over recent years, and these days you can find German genre authors who write for readers with more than the minimum intelligence required to decipher a text, and litfic authors to whom the concept of reading for enjoyment is not utterly alien. And sometimes you get a novel like Tschick (which show more would have been impossible thirty years ago) that is undoubtedly literary fiction but also is insanely fun to read, enjoyable on all kinds of levels, whether it’s analysis of structure and imagery or or whether it’s being swept away by a ripping good yarn.

The main reason for Tschick’s success (artistically as well as commercially – the novel was a bestseller in Germany) lies, I think, in its narrative voice, that of fourteen year old Maik who relates events from a first person view. Maik is your average awkward teenager, thinks of himself as boring and is in love with a girl from his class who barely knows that he exists. But then a new guy is introduced, Tschick, the son of Russian immigrants and very much a social outsider. Rather without intending to, Maik slides into a friendship with Tschick who one day stands at his door with a stolen car, and before Maik quite knows what is happening, the two of them are on their towards Wallachia where supposedly Tschick’s grandfather lives.

What then follows is a riff on simultaneously road movie, Bildungsroman and quest romance, a wild and hugely entertaining ride through Eastern Germany in the course of which encounter all sorts of bizarre characters while discovering both themselves and each other. It is a very hard thing to do, but Wolfgang Herrndorf manages to exactly hit the note of a fourteen-year old’s voice, giving his narrator just enough jargon and attitude to make him sound his age, but never so much as to make it come across as obtrusive and unconvincing. The novel is funny without being forced, touching without being sentimental, and while the story unfolds in what is quite recognisably present-day Germany it is never simply realistic (at least not in the sense of depicting things “just as they are” as realism is still most commonly understood). The narrative often has a dreamlike feel about it, sometimes peaking into the outright surreal, but it is always somewhat larger than life, as if common reality was not quite sufficient to hold Maik, Tschick and the people they encounter on their trip.

And while Wolfgang Herrndorf does not gloss over the bleakness of the East German Maik and Tschick travers in their stolen car, and does not serve the reader a facile happy ending, when all is said done, Tschick is not only a very funy and highly entertaining novel, but also a rather hopeful one; summarised neatly by the narrator at the end when he reflects that he has always been told how people are bad, and even though this might be true of 99% of everyone, he and Tschick on their journey enountered almost exclusively the one percent that was not bad. There is some melancholy in this, but also no small amount of optimism and I’d wager most readers will close this novel with a smile on their face and think back on it fondly. show less

Publicado originalmente: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

Adoré este libro de principio a fin, ya había comentado antes que busco nuevos escenarios para mis lecturas, expandir mi geografía mental (?) a Alemania y sus alrededores fue hermoso.

El libro está escrito de una manera tan bonita y a veces inocente y otras descarada, lo cual me hizo a mí como lector disfrutar cada uno de sus párrafos extensos. E uno de esos libros donde no hay muchos diálogos, pero cuando los hay son solo para dar el punto preciso a la escena. Soy amante de los libros con road trip, me encanta la fantasía pero hay algo más en la singularidad de la realidad, el esto-SÍ-puede-pasar. Amé cada uno de los personajes, todos, absolutamente todos, algunos solo salen show more dos o menos capítulos y me dolía despedirme de ellos. De uno en especial estuve completamente asustada, desde que apareció me generó tremenda ternura, de esos personajes que se roban completamente toda la escena, aunque debo decir que el escritor me dejó un poco picada, me hubiera gustado saber más.

El título original es Tschick, y como bien dice la sinopsis es el personaje que genera todo el alboroto, cuando terminé de leer solo quise sacarlo del libro y abrazarlo mucho, mucho.

Como dije el libro ya lo pueden encontrar en español, es una lectura que les recomiendo altamente, uno de esos tesoros escondidos, ojalá puedan leerlo pronto y disfrutarlo tanto o más de lo que yo lo hice.

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This book is great fun! The fourteen-year-old protagonist, Maik, has the time of his life with "Tschick," the new Russian kid from school, when the latter convinces him to take a real summer vacation with him in a stolen car while Maik's parents are away. At first, Tschick is just a silent individual, who brings an unconventional element to the classroom, and no one manages to get to know him. Maik is more concerned with his utter disappointment that the girl he has a crush on didn’t invite him to her birthday party after he’d spent weeks drawing a picture of Beyoncé to give her. He believes he wasn’t invited because he’s just too boring. But, on the day summer vacation begins, Tschick seeks out Maik, and then keeps turning up, show more first on a dilapidated women’s bike and then in a stolen Lada. Tschick and Maik embark on an adventure that is anything but boring. This coming-of-age novel has lots of twists and turns, and lot lots of hilarity. I highly recommend it. show less