Renate Rasp (1935–2015)

I first read A FAMILY FAILURE when I was very young - too young, truthfully. As literature, it posed no problems for a bright pre-adolescent; it's a slim book (at 126 pages) and an easy read, in the sense that the language and plot are straightforward, not in the least poetic or opaque. But the story is unbearably nightmarish and has haunted me all these years. I recently acquired a second hand copy and, although it took a bit of nerve, I'm very glad I chose to re-visit it. Quite simply, it's the story of a boy whose abusive stepfather, Felix, and bitter, ineffectual mother try to turn him into a tree.

While there is a fantastic element to the tale, this is by no means a traditional work of fantasy. There is never any suggestion that other little boys are being turned into trees by their parents, nor that this is even a possible, achievable, goal. Which, of course, is the whole point. The book works on two levels. On the one hand, it is the most realistic portrayal of a family suffering under the domination of a psychologically abusive and controlling patriarch that I have ever encountered and, on the other, it is a brilliant allegory illustrating the very real damage done to children whose parents refuse to accept them as they are and try to force them to be something they are not.

The narrator, Kuno, is fifty years old at the book's opening. He is almost completely immobile, obese, without hands and confined to a wheelchair. In flashbacks, he recounts his years from the age of ten, when his "Uncle" Felix decides he should become a tree, to the age of seventeen when he is finally planted in their back garden. Because both the boy and his mother work tirelessly for Felix's approval, they are initially as excited and motivated for the plan to work as he is. As the story painfully unfolds, we are given glimpses into Felix's alienation of his wife's friends, his intolerance of her beloved piano playing, his disregard for her belongings, his utter meanness with money, his sexual withdrawal - all in aid of our understanding that, although almost gleefully complicit in the torment of her son (which is considerable), she too, is a victim of her husband's abuse. At times, she and Kuno are allies against Felix's manipulations but more often, they are adversaries, vying against one another for his approval and affection. When Kuno's inevitable failure to become a tree is finally, incontrovertibly, evident, Felix blames the both of them, hatefully insinuating that the boy is soft and his mother indulgent. Although Kuno is penitent, both parents despise him ever afterward.

The book is relentless in its depiction of the escalating horrors perpetrated on the boy - isolation, starvation, sense depravation, bondage, brutal amputation - all told in the flat, unknowing tone of someone who is blind to his status as a victim, instead painting a portrait of himself as merely a failure in his Herculean efforts to please his stepfather. Kuno is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

This book (an English translation of a novel by German poet Renate Rasp) has been out of print for many years. As far as I can tell, Ms. Rasp never wrote another novel. But I urge anyone to seek this book out and read it. For a long time I suspected my reaction to it, as a child, was perhaps overly dramatic, but having just re-read it (in one sitting), I can say with confidence that it is one of the richest, most unsettling, deeply disturbing, effecting and powerful books I have ever read.… (meer)