Greed

May 1, 2007
Novelist, poet, and playwright Jelinek's latest novel (published in German four years before she won the Nobel prize) is not for the casual reader or the faint of heart. Set in southern Austria, "Greed" tells the story of a country policeman with a mania for property acquisition and an appetite for rough sex that leads to the murder of a 16-year-old girl. The storyline, however, is not the important element of this novel. Its driving force is Jelinek's inimitable style of commentary on relationships between men and women, the struggles of the writer and of aging, the state of the environment, and Jelinek's love-hate relationship with Austria, among other things. The stream-of-consciousness musings of the novel's unidentifiable female narrator may drive some readers to distraction, with their repetition, lack of plot progression, and often incomprehensible wordplays. Like her or not, this "extraordinary linguistic zeal" (here masterfully translated by Chalmers) is why Jelinek is a Nobel laureate. Suitable for academic libraries with strong literary collections.Karen Walton Morse, Univ. at Buffalo Libs., NY

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