Just look at Konrad, the architect. When he and Dora moved into the house, she was expecting; eleven years later she has left him together with their daughter Katharina. At 16, Katharina moves in again, and Konrad fills the fridge for her. And he brings out a model of his dream house, built in his lonesome years. Konrad doesn’t see that his daughter is disappearing in front of his eyes because she stopped eating. He also doesn’t see Marie, the doctor living downstairs, who falls in love with him and finds Katharina after her breakdown. This story and all the others in this book open on two sides, just like doors leading from one room to another. Gudrun Seidenauer opens the doors to a whole universe within confined spaces, merging past and present. In brilliant style and with a keen sense for the psychology of humans, she tells the stories a house would tell if it were more than a silent witness.

“Hermann is dead, now I can remember precisely.” The husband of Marianne fell down the stairs and broke his neck – an accident. She knows exactly when it happened: She wrote it down on a piece of paper in order not to forget, not like she uses to forget lunch sometimes or her neighbor’s name or her pills. Marianne suffers from Alzheimer; she is losing her memories, now she has lost her husband, too. “She’s crying ‘cause she knows that it’s too late, although he’s dead.” An accident? Friederike, Marianne’s daughter, has her doubts. Did her mother have to become a murderer to break free? While Friederike finds herself forced by her father’s death to take care for her mother, the latter withdraws herself bit by bit: she withdraws into her past, into a time when she was only a child, when she did not need bags and notes to prevent herself from forgetting. “Unraveled Days” is Gudrun Seidenauer’s second novel: cautious, touching and full of empathy, nevertheless not at the expense of the author’s linguistic accuracy.

Collecting as an obsession: the touching story of a junkaholic defying throwaway society. Alfred Irgang is a collector. However, he does not collect stamps or antiques, but simply anything that he comes across: old newspapers, false teeth that are as good as new, and other things that naïve members of the throwaway society surrender to the garbage collection. Accordingly, his apartment and various cellar compartments are remarkably filled to the brim, which in turn leads to considerable difficulties with the property managers, which, on the other hand, does not keep him from his hunt for treasures. Does not a lady’s corsage have as much of a story to tell as a Biedermeier davenport? At the regular’s table, where a group of scientists and art lovers meet, the collector likes to present his treasures but naturally meets little appreciation. When after an “occupational accident” he is confined to a hospital bed, the regulars see their chance to force their blessings on him …. It is with subtle irony that Evelyn Grill tells of a society that considers itself to be good, while the motto “to live and let live” is buried by the insatiable desire to usurp a maladjusted person.

Xenia is a painter. When she gets a scholarship and is invited to Rome, she sees her chance to no longer live in the shadow as an artist. Xenia has just arrived in Rome when she receives a call by her sister from her homeland: Their mother, a famous writer, has collapsed at a lecture and is in a coma. The mother for whom her own prestige has always been more important than her family, her art more important than her children: Because of her Xenia shall travel back, turn down the chance to assert herself – not least towards the mother? The mother’s silence and death and her own distance force Xenia to grapple with her childhood, with her mother’s egoism and not least with her own art – the egoism of the daughter. Xenia stays: because of her mother who is unreachable for her approaches, and because of Alma, the photographer, who disappears in a mysterious way; also she, without saying good-bye. Evelyn Grill is unmistakable: sober-minded, lapidary, without sentimentality. Evelyn Grill is endowed with the ability to draft lives with all their inherent ambivalence. (...) Beyond the fascination (...) terrifying biographies appear that are revealed with masterful precision by the narrow novel. Alongside the row of memorable characters (...) Evelyn Grill designs a Rome that sparkles with life and art (...). FAZ, Andreas Platthaus Even though it is more psychological than her last novels, "The Roman Light" is still typical of Grill: Clear language is combined with complex construction; the motives are artfully interwoven, and, likewise, ironically undermined. FALTER, Kirstin Breitenfellner