Serpent's Child

Summary: A coming-of-age novel that is set in a farming village near Klagenfurt and in Salzburg during the later 1970s. Its sure sense of place and time and its psychological acuity suggest the intimacy of autobiographical experience that knows how traditions of patriarchal abuse and the dictates of conformity disfigure a seemingly idyllic milieu. A person of inquisitive intelligence, Truschner's protagonist observes the dyna...mics of dysfunctional relationships with, by turns, the dispassionate objectivity of an outsider and the tenderness of a wounded, disoriented sensitivity in search of human closeness. His fondness for extended metaphors and analogous similes charges his language with an explosive and at times extravagant energy and thus speaks for the continued artistic vigor of a fictional genre that has been an Austrian obsession for decades. [read more]