I’ve read rather mixed reviews of A Game Of Cards, (also known as The Card Game) but being a fan of German novels (and also of anything published by Pushkin Press) decided to try it for myself – and was very pleased that I did so.
It is not easy to find much about the author, although the German Wikipedia contains an entry about him showing that he has written various radio plays, a total of four books, and has won a couple of local literary prizes . He apparently still works as a taxi driver in Hamburg (he was born in 1938 so perhaps at age 70 he has now retired?).
I found myself soon absorbed in the slowly developing plot, which makes use of quite a few literary devices designed to puzzle the reader. We chop back and forth between two series of events, the first being the visits of young Markus Hauser to an elderly lady’s house, Selma Bruhns, where he is employed on a temporary basis to sort her papers into chronological order. The second series is interleaved with the first and describes a police investigation during which Markus undergoes a series of interviews which gradually reveal his background and the events leading up to the climactic event which finishes the book.
Within these events other stories emerge, rather like a series of Russian dolls. The content of the papers Markus sifts through suggests terrible events in the past, and the interviews with the police also reveal more and more background to the story.
I found it all rather clever, and the chopping back and forth between events in the recent past and the present held my attention although usually such devices tend to annoy me. It all came together at the end rather like a symphony, with all the loose ends being tied together and forming a quite satisfying conclusion (as I write, I am realising the impossibility of providing a decent review without revealing too much about the story!).
The added value of this initially puzzling book is its style, which I found modernistic and minimalistic. There are lots of silences and unresolved conversations. The characters are not described in any definite way but are left to be defined by the developing story. I do not agree with those who suggest that The Game of Cards is reminiscent of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, despite Schroder’s emerging holocaust theme. Whereas The Reader is about the effects of the holocaust, this book is definitely concerned with the present day and the moral dilemmas of Markus.
This book would never be a mass-market paperback because the casual reader looking for more overt drama would find it frustratingly under-stated. Its definitely “European” in its style, avoiding the fussiness of so much English writing. On the whole, it fits well in Pushkin Press’ catalogue, and for those who like this sort of thing (I do), its well-worth reading.
