For our January YMTA bookclub we read Altes Land by Dörte Hansen, published in 2015. The novel was suggested by some of our German readers and features in Paul Sullivan’s selection in The Guardian of the 10 of the best novels set in Germany, where he calls it ‘something of a surprise hit’ with readers. In English the novel is entitled This House is Mine and the readers of the novel in English read the wonderful translation by Anne Stokes.

The novel is set in an aging farmhouse in a fruit growing area not far from Hamburg. The narrative opens in 1945 where two characters, Vera and her mother Hildegard, arrive as refugees from eastern Prussia, as many refugees did at that time in Germany. The narrative moves between 1945 and present-day Hamburg, where the readers meet Anne, a young mother. Our discussion opened with this narrative chronology, which some of us had difficulties with at the beginning, but that we got used to and in the words of one our German readers, like a ‘spiral’ or a puzzle that comes together it was ‘fascinating’. 

In discussing the characters of the refugees Vera and her mother Hildegard, we felt that the relations between them were very troubled. We discussed what one reader characterised as  ‘genetic spirals’, that they were unhappy and were stuck within recurring negative behavioural patterns as they lived in the splendid but decaying farmhouse where they have been given refuge. In contrast, in the present-day narrative the character Anne is very different. The chair of the YMTA Ursula felt that as a reader she was impatient for someone to take care of the decaying farmhouse house and that this was a metaphor for self-healing of the refugee characters. Ursula found it a great relief when Anne, who we discover is the niece of Vera, starts to visit her aunt and care for the house! Our German readers noted that they were hopeful for the younger generation, that Vera needed to bond with her niece and that as readers we were waiting for a relationship between these two to develop.

Dörte Hansen’s narrative we found lyrical, humorous and very well observed. We discussed how the novel portrays the changing nature of life in the countryside as wealthy Hamburg dwellers move into the village and start to renovate the traditional houses. There are some funny scenes, such as a townie journalist coming to join in with traditional sausage making practices and being unable at all to stomach the actual process of making sausages. We all enjoyed the portrait of the happy go lucky neighbour of Britte, who has a family of four children and lives in chaos - with dogs and mess but her children are happy - she doesn’t care what the neighbours think! The characters who people the village in the present-day narrative represent two types of community – old-style farmers and those who are moving in from ‘hipster’ type Hamburg families.

In the course of our discussions, three our German readers shared refugee experiences that resonated with those portrayed in the novel.  One reader’s husband had come as young boy to Schleswig Holstein as a refugee and with 11 people from three families worked for eight years on a farm. Another reader had come herself as a refugee in the 1950’s with her aunt, mother and 3 children - they were welcomed when they arrived but she was not ‘shocked’  by the hostile treatment of refugees depicted in the novel. A third reader’s parents were refugees from Lithuania who had had to flee with their elderly mother. They were given refuge and worked on a farm, although sadly their elderly mother died there.  Our reader had listened carefully to her refugee mother’s stories and understands the idea of generational trauma, the very strong impact of the feeling that you have not fully arrived and have not really ever got settled, which the character of Vera feels in the novel.  This reader felt that Hansen, who is the same age as her, had experiences similar to hers and that of her family lying behind the novel. We then discussed how of the generation who had come themselves to Germany, some now have ‘big problems’ with the new waves of refugees that have come to live in Germany.

One scene in particular struck all of us as very beautiful. As the relationship between Vera and her niece Anne develops, Vera shows her niece aspects of the life in the fruit-growing area. She takes Anne to see how framers protect the early young blossom on very cold nights through ‘frost protection’ (p. 285) by spraying the blossoms with fine water droplets, so that the trees, in the early morning, are covered in ice and the branches, leaves and blossoms ‘looked as though they’d been cast in glass. The trees were like candelabras, sparkling brightly in the early morning sunlight. It was like walking in a hall of mirrors’ (p. 285). This passage struck us all as memorable and very beautiful – the very old technique to protect vulnerable blooms in early Spring. One of our readers shared with us their experiences of seeing this technique in use in this area of Northern Germany.

As the relationship between the older Vera and younger Anne grows, the cycle of pain down the generations in the novel starts to heal and the ice in Vera’s heart melts a little. As members of the book club, we felt that the ending, where the aging farmhouse is being restored offered hope and new beginnings in the village and to us as readers. There was much to discuss in Altes Land between us about the issues of refugees, the changing nature of the countryside in both the UK and Germany and inter-generational relationships. This was a great book to read and discuss!
 
Amanda Naylor 21st March 2024
PS there is a highly recommended 2-part film version:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10432924/

The YMTA bookclub was started so that readers from York and Münster can meet virtually and discuss books about local places or by local authors.  We meet for an hour online, breaking into two rooms to chat in English or German, coming back together thirty minutes later.  

Our Autumn 2023 discussion was about Fiona Mozley’s Elmet, her debut novel and long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2017. It was suggested for the club by one of the York readers who remembered it as a strange and powerful depiction of the lives of people living not far outside of York, but who were living at the margins of society.  

Fiona Mozley grew up in York and studied for her PhD in Medieval History at the University of York, aspects which fitted well with the philosophy of the bookclub. Turns out the book gave nightmares to one of our members but to others it was lyrical, evocative and intriguing. So our discussion began!

We started by commenting on the out of time feeling evoked by the setting of the novel, the way that the plot opens with the central characters, a family of three, building their home in a copse somewhere near the East Coast railway line and a power station (possibly Drax?).  The family build and live in a house they have made from wood and survive by living off the landscape. They are completely off grid - making their own furniture, growing and catching their food, using fires to cook. One of our readers from Münster is a medievalist and commented on the way that the novel seems to allude to these early medieval ways of living, that there are very few modern aspects of life that are present in the text.  We agreed this gave the novel a fairytale quality. 

The title of the novel Elmet is explained by Ted Hughes in the prologue, ‘Elmet was the last independent Celtic kingdom in England and originally stretched out over the vale of York…But even into the seventeenth century this narrow cleft and its side-gunnels, under the glaciated moors, were still a ‘badlands’, a sanctuary for refugees from the law.’  

We all felt that this echo of the past was present in the narrative, both in the lack of reference to contemporary ways of living and in the liminal existence of the family. The family live out of reach from the normal structures of society – the police, teachers, social services – as if these institutions do not exist. The medieval period was also a much more violent period than our own and one of readers commented that the novel contains within it a sense of violence which will in the end explode – which it does. It is this element of violence in the novel that gave nightmares to our more sensitive reader!

As a group we were split about whether we actually liked the novel or not. One member stated that the novel was very well written and believable and she didn’t mind the cruelty - whilst others felt it was too cruel and at the end unrealistic. 

What we did all agree on was the extraordinary depiction of the central characters in the novel.  
The father, or ‘Daddy’, as the young narrator calls him, is depicted as huge oak-like man, a man of few words who believes in his body to protect his family and earns his money through bare knuckle fighting.  One of our readers in Münster said he reminded her of a Green Man, in his relationship to nature, understanding the nature of the woodlands and although gathering food in the landscape but always trying to do this without cruelty. There were those who admired him, with the family being harmonious and very close and those who found him a very uncomfortable figure. One reader was very strongly reminded of their own father, an unemotional figure, and could not empathise with this character at all. 

We see the whole story through the eyes of Daniel, an adolescent boy, whose sensitivity and intelligence are conveyed through the use of details that he observes.  One reader called Daniel a ‘serene counterpoint’ to his father, which we felt was a wonderful observation. 

We discussed how both children seem to feel trapped in their bodies – that the other males that Daniel encounters in his marginal existence are hyper masculine and cannot understand his gentleness and sexuality – while his sister Cathy is in character like her father - but as an adolescent girl is consistently underestimated and patronised by people outside her family unit.  Until, that is, the end of the novel. 

In relation to this, we had a very animated discussion about the anger that Cathy carries within her and (spoiler alert) how at the end of the book, which takes a mystical turn, she takes revenge on all the men that have conspired to kill her father, like an avenging goddess. Whether as a reader we liked the novel or not, we certainly had some lively discussions about Yorkshire, the Yorkshire accent and the links to history and fairytale in the novel and the local landscape!
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Amanda Naylor