Cabo de Gata

September 19, 2016
In this short novel, Ruge (In Times of Fading Light) delivers a plaintive drawn-from-life piece of autofiction about a Berlin-based writer who abruptly decides to leave his life behind. He quits his university job, closes his accounts, sells his furniture, and says good-bye to his family before embarking on a new life in Spain, where he plans to do little but live as a transient in a place where he neither knows the language nor any of the people, winding up in the Andalusian village of Cabo De Gata. There, he watches the sea, collects shells, meets a pair of fellow expatriates—a divorced Englishman and a doomed American—and immerses himself in the mysteries of Cabo De Gata: Who owns the coffin that washes up on the beach one day and sits unclaimed? What is the meaning of the stray cat the narrator cares for? The task Ruge has set himself is to painstakingly catalogue his memory of an uneventful 123 days in a quiet place (many paragraphs begin “I remember”), mark the comings and going of fishermen, and even the shapes of clouds. Ruge’s book is not a novel in the traditional sense, but something of a notebook that gradually reveals the shape of a life, the mood of a place, and the passing of time, as well as being a placid rejoinder to the autobiographical semi-fictions popularized by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Ben Lerner. Cabo De Gata a refreshing excursion, its moments effortlessly building meaning throughout.

In German Book Prize winner Ruge's (In Times of Fading Light, 2013) new novel, a writer abandons his life in Berlin and embarks on a journey toward self-realization. In the wake of his mother's death and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ruge's unnamed narrator finds himself deeply discontent with the mind-numbing monotony of his life. He's 40, exists generally in solitude, and can't seem to cut ties with his ex-girlfriend Karolin, whom he dated for 10 years. After being cajoled into watching Karolin's daughter (whose father, ostensibly, is not him) on New Year's Eve, our narrator decides it's time to leave Berlin and finally start that novel he's been meaning to write. The next morning, "like a man venturing into the street for the first time after a long sickness," he departs to Barcelona and, from there, takes an overnight bus to the titular Cabo de Gata, a village on the southeast coast of Andalusia (a word which he, heretofore, always thought fondly of as "A kind of fantastic adjective meaning wonderful or enchanting"). Suffice it to say, it's no paradise. To his dismay, he's dropped off in a ghost town complete with shoddy architecture, a few vacant bars, and a promenade overrun by gangs of cats and dogs. But after a few peculiar encounters on the beach--involving a deceased hermit crab and a flock of synchronized birds hunting for food--he decides to stay for more than just one night and eventually acquiesces to the simpler lifestyle of Cabo de Gata. And the fact that he's largely ignored by the locals only makes him more emboldened by his anonymity. The tone of the novel shifts and gradually becomes darker when our narrator meets an elusive ginger tabby cat that takes to him and also eerily reminds him of his mother. With colloquial prose and sardonic wit, Ruge eruditely captures his narrator's precarious reality and creates a world that's a pleasure to observe and meander through. At times ruefully hilarious and absurd, this slight, philosophical book will humor anyone who's ever questioned his or her place in this unforgiving universe. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016

The study of an East German family through decades of Communist rule and beyond, Ruge's In Times of Fading Light won him an international following. Though the quality of the writing remains the same, this new novel is entirely different in focus, eschewing the big picture for an account of one man sorting out his life. The protagonist recalls a time as a young man when he realizes that he's mindlessly performing his daily tasks, can barely afford a cup of coffee, and won't ever be able to bond with the son he has with his ex-girlfriend. He instantly decides to walk out on his life, leaving Berlin for Spain and eventually the Andalusian village of Cabo de Gata. It sounds like a glorious escape, but he doesn't find exactly paradise; for one thing, he hasn't planned well. Still, there's some small redemption in his caring for a stray cat. VERDICT Our hero is not always the best company, and there are times when his complaints about the monotony of his life become ours, but his contemplative concern is real and the lesson that happiness is hard-earned a good one.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016
In German writer Ruge's (In Times of Fading Light, 2013) newest novel to be translated into English, an unnamed writer (he's successful now, he tells us) remembers when, down-and-out after a breakup and growing tired of his rapidly changing city, he left Berlin for a tiny town on Spain's Andalusian coast. In Cabo de Gata (Cape of the Cat), he spends his days trying to write, being unsatisfied but not unhappy with his lodging and the detritus-strewn little town in general, and obsessing over his waitress' (the same one he has at every meal) sizable backside. He makes few connections. One day, he meets a wild orange tabby cat that follows him back to his hostel, where he feeds her crumbles of Manchego cheese before she takes off. The next day, he retraces his steps at the same hour, and there his mewing little muse appears. In vain, he tries to find her at different times of the day, and he grows obsessed. This quiet writer's novel, short and sweet, considers creativity's absurdity, and its elusiveness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)