The Bird Is a Raven

October 17, 2005
Lebert became a literary sensation in Germany when his Crazy
was published in 2000, when he was 18. This follow-up is, in a word, sophomoric. Two young men meet on a train from Munich to Berlin when they're given adjacent sleeping compartments. Henry asks Paul if he can tell him an involved tale; Paul, in his 20s and more experienced with Berlin and much else, relents out of a kind of restless need for distraction. As Henry drones on about a pathetic love triangle involving an anorexic named Christine, an obese rich kid named Jens and his own problems with his bowels, Paul's attention wanders, and we get bits of his own banal backstory. There's nothing remarkable about Henry's telling—in fact, it's aggressively boring—and Paul's own ruminations are run-of-the-mill dour. The tension fails to rise as Henry narrates the denouement of his problems with Christine and Jens, and a completely unmotivated surprise ending doesn't do anything to redeem the proceedings. This book misses even the club kid readers it's aiming for.

February 1, 2006
German author Lebert achieved international acclaim at a young age with his first novel, "Crazy" His current work is steeped in a classic noir construct: Two strangers are assigned the same sleep berth on a passenger train traveling to Berlin from Munich in the dead of night, and throughout the hours of darkness secrets are revealed and lives changed. At first, things appear to be normal. Henry and Paul are young men traveling to an urban center to escape love, loss, and various coming-of -age problems. Beneath the surface, however, much darker issues are at play; with the action moving as quickly as the train across the north German landscape, the story crescendos to a shocking climax as it becomes obvious that neither character will escape unscathed. Told in short, sparse sentences, this novella can be completed in one sitting. Recommended for large public libraries with customers interested in international fiction." -Christopher Korenowsky, Columbus Metropolitan Lib. Syst., OH"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2005
Lebert's debut novel, " Crazy" (2000), was published when he was only 16, and the follow-up was published in Germany three years after that. Now Lebert's second novel has made its way across the ocean, and those who enjoyed his first will find his second an even moodier, more mature exploration of the plight of young people in contemporary Germany. Twenty-year-old Paul is on his way to Berlin when he meets Henry, the young man who will be sharing his sleeper car with him. Henry isn't interested in sleeping; he wants to tell Paul the story of the tragic love triangle he was drawn into, involving Christine, the beautiful, anorexic young woman he adores, and Jens, the overweight man whom Christine meets at an eating disorder clinic. Henry and Jens, both in love with Christine, grow close until something happens to offset the delicate balance of the group. Paul has a story, too, but readers will have to wait a while to uncover his secret in this involving, tense novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)