Nina Bußmann “Three Weeks in August”: Only Dunes Between Us and the Fire

This time, Elena does not want to discuss things with her family. Neither with her husband Kolja nor with her two children. When her friend Ali suggests that she could use a detached house on the French Atlantic coast over the summer, Elena agrees "without thinking".

She neglects to ask why the beautifully located accommodation is not occupied in high season. Nevertheless, she knows the background: Ali's partner Nana, who owns the house, is suffering from a malignant brain tumor and is dying. Elena just thinks to herself: "Sad stories happen to rich people too."

The harshness with which the people in Nina Bußmann's new novel "Three Weeks in August" treat each other is not least due to their economic dependence. Ali is also Elena's boss, which will play an important role in the course of the plot.

But first of all, the spontaneous traveler to France is happy to be the mistress of the holiday home. She has persuaded her housekeeper Eve to come on holiday with her. Elena convinces herself that she has found an interesting "companion" in the gruff employee, and for Eve it is primarily "paid weeks by the sea".

The three weeks in August that give the film its title are described from these two very different first-person perspectives, and the sometimes contradictory views of the same events reveal not only bizarre idiosyncrasies but also the lies that the two characters tell. Elena and Eve seem to be dueling in their monologues.

In real life, however, they cannot really interact with each other across class boundaries. What the two women have in common, however, is their amazing ability to ignore any dangers and stick to their own vacation plans.

The forests are burning in the distance, but the holiday routine is not going to change: excursions, sports, cooking. A holiday fling that makes for restless nights, and the occasional phone call to the husband, who has stayed at home for the time being because he still has a lot of things to do. Despite all the hustle and bustle, the catastrophe cannot be completely repressed: "We can smell it. And of course we can see it too. There are no mountains or rocks in the way, just dunes between us and the reflection of the flames."

The sensitive and at the same time completely ignorant holidaymaker has settled into her completely normal recklessness. Her daughter calculates how quickly the fire would spread to the holiday home if the wind changed direction. There is an evacuation plan, but this does not even seem to worry the informed and rather intrusive neighbour. On the contrary. "In the face of collapse, I always felt alive," says Elena at the end of the first chapter, and we suspect that soon not only trees but also relationships will go up in flames.

As the story progresses, the winds only change in the interpersonal area, but they become all the more violent. The mood in the holiday home is constantly threatening to change, the communicative climate seems almost more threatening than the unpredictable weather extremes. The disruptive factors and tensions are constantly increasing: sometimes unannounced guests come by, the son gets injured, then Elena's daughter disappears for a few days. The young woman, who is already mentally troubled, suddenly reappears without explaining where she has been.

Although that was the original plan, husband Kolja cannot come to France because the house at home is under water. An attractive man in a camper van turns out to be a disappointment in character, and Elena cannot rely on her oldest friend either. In a crisis, Ali is primarily an employer who provides the house in France rent-free, but can also quit the job during the holidays.

The book contains an astonishing number of microstories that almost imperceptibly fit together to form a narrative whole. The delicate web of prose is not only based on social and everyday contrasts, but also on striking similarities.

All the characters in this unspectacularly sinister novel are notable for their egomaniacal character traits. This probably describes a key feature of the Anthropocene: instead of being interested in the environment and the well-being of everyone, people are primarily concerned with their own short-term needs.

Nina Bußmann does not turn this material into a moralizing lesson. She has written a detailed holiday novel that allows for different tones and leaves room for humor even in the spitefulness of the two narrators' voices. Bußmann shows a feel for the psyche of her terribly lonely heroines; the text also shines with its descriptions of nature.

The author, born in 1980, is able to tell stories with great clarity, as is shown by the numerous supporting characters, who even the smart-ass Elena and Eve cannot always figure out. In any case, the ambiguities increase towards the end of the convincing prose work. This aesthetic program can also be read politically: personal and political abysses lurk in the routines of our everyday lives.