Book Review: Jägerin und Sammlerin by Lana Lux

 

Jägerin und Sammlerin - in my translation She-Hunter and She-Gatherer - by Lana Lux is one of the few articulated novels on the concomitent topics of mental health, eating disorders and Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union. 

Alisa moved to Germany from Ukraine, part of the so-called ´contingent immigrants´ - with her mother and father when she was 3 years old. Caught between the challenges of the new life, the ambitions and relatively lack of empathy of her mother, and the teenage years, Alisa will soon collapse in the open arms of the eating disorder. After years of fighting the demons of the sickness she will start a long-term therapy and will burn the bridges between her and her mother, Tanya. The story continues to the version of Tanya´s story, a switch which gives more complexity to the narrative and balances the story that until then was exclusively centered on the girl´s version. Thus, the roots of the problem are expanded and explained in a complex way. 

Personally, I devoured this book during my current holidays. It is well written, it reproduces the voices of the two women with the nuances and complexities of the age and experience, and first and foremost is sheds light on the various voices of the eating disorder, an old acquintance of mine. The voices and the personalities of the two main characters are very clear and carefully built, and so is the conflict between generations and the (eternal) mother-daughter clash.  

Although not unusual among Jews coming from the former Soviet Union that happened to meet during my time in Germany, the Jewish identity although stated does not have any content besides being nominalla acknowledged. 

There are elements of the author´s identity that are used in the constructions of the book. Herself she is originally from Ukraine, arrived to Germany as a child, part of the ´contingent´, the page she is managing, of cartoons on topics of mental health - @eva_and_her_demons etc. Those elements however do not diminish the originality or the pertinence of the topic.

I was impressed by the complex take on eating disorder put in the context of the inter-generational narrative. It is a rare yet necessary literary background which reaches out far beyond the literature, in the everyday life of someone dealing with such serious issues. I loved the writing and the choice of the characters as well as the idea of the title, which finelly delineates the distinction between the mother and the daughter. 

I already ordered another book by Lux and I just hope to discover more Jewish voices of her literary generation that may fill the (mis)understanding gap I´ve encountered in Germany when it comes to people with a similar background to Lux´s.

Rating: 4 stars