Daniela Krien is an author I’ve been meaning to try for a while, and today was the day! The Fire (2021, transl. Jamie Bulloch 2023) follows long-term married couple Rahel and Peter over a few weeks as they try to find their way back to one another, or at least identify if that remains something they want at all.

They have planned a break from their Dresden home, to a cabin in Upper Bavaria. Right before they are due to leave, it burns down.

“Had this happened ten years ago the two of them would have shaken their heads. ‘Who knows, there might be a silver lining…’ Peter would have probably said, giving her a comforting hug. But he’s not so laid back anymore. His subtle sense of humour often veers towards the cynical nowadays, and their lively discussions have given way to a polite amicability. But, worst of all, he’s stopped sleeping with her.”

A recent professional crisis for literature professor Peter has left him and Rahel increasingly distant. Told from Rahel’s point of view, she is desperate to recover their intimacy, but is at a loss as to how to achieve this, despite being a psychologist and used to discussing other people’s relationships.

“In literature he loves impatient, tempestuous souls. Only in books does he get close to them without feeling threatened.”

They end up staying at the remote home of a friend of Rahel’s late mother. Ruth’s husband Viktor has had a stroke so she needs Rahel to watch the house and garden, and care for her considerable menagerie of animals, while she is at the rehab centre. Ruth and Viktor’s home was a constant in Rahel’s tumultuous childhood, and the backdrop to some of the unanswered questions she has from that time.

Over their days there, Rahel will reflect on her past, both her childhood and the thirty years she has shared with Peter. Their somewhat chaotic daughter Selma will arrive with their young grandchildren, they will swim in the lake, care for the animals, eat food and drink wine, and things will change almost imperceptibly but irrevocably.

“It occurs to Rahel that, particularly in a marriage, the sum of what isn’t said for outweighs the sum of what is.”

The Fire builds careful character studies of Rahel and Peter: who they are professionally; as spouses; and as parents as well as individuals. In middle-age they are trying to navigate their place in a changing world. Both are increasingly frustrated at work in different ways. Krien considers generational differences, compounded by Rahel and Peter growing up in the GDR which Selma is scathing about, resentful of her parents’ anti-capitalist leanings which means limited inheritance for her.

The characterisation is subtle. I’m not sure I particularly liked Rahel or Peter, but I didn’t particularly dislike them either. They were believable, flawed people, somewhat unhappy, trying to work out what would make life better for them. This would make a good read for a book club, with plenty to discuss in terms of character and relationship dynamics.

Krien’s writing is pared-back and understated. She trusts the insight of her readers, very much showing and not telling. The ending isn’t tied up neatly, the writing is too sophisticated for anything trite. But it is a satisfyingly realised story, leaving me keen to explore this writer further.

“Nobody else she knows has this connection with literature. Peter doesn’t just read books, he works with them, relates what he’s read to himself, his views, his behaviour and changes them if necessary. For him, literature is like a living counterpart. Sometimes even more alive than what plays out before his eyes. And unlike people, he finds it indispensable.”