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Greed: A novel by Elfriede Jelinek
The Nobel winner’s latest is in essence a murder mystery, focusing on Gabi, a 16-year-old dredged up from a polluted Austrian lake, and Kurt Janisch, a ‘country policeman’ with a voracious appetite for abusive sex with middle-aged women (the narrator included). But it is also an attack on almost every aspect of modern life. Jelinek, a former Communist party member, makes her feelings known about socialism’s failures, Kosovo, environmental damage and cyclists, who ‘are already kicked enough by merely existing’. Be warned: it can be tough going. Paragraphs – pages long and free of dialogue – meander around, punctuation placed to aid rhythm, not sense, calling to mind Kerouac or Beckett. But if you can cling to the plot, rich linguistic rewards are to be had.
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