The veteran German author Ewald Arenz is a bestseller and award winner in his native country, and it’s easy to see why on the evidence of One Grand Summer, his second novel to be published in English, sensitively translated by Rachel Ward.
The story is set in the 1980s in rural Germany, and focuses on 16-year-old Frieder, who flunks a couple of classes at school, and has to forgo the family holiday and instead stay with his grandmother and step-grandfather to revise. But Frieder’s best friend Johann is around too, and he also meets Beate, the girl in the beautiful green swimsuit with whom he quickly forms a bond.
Like the author’s previously translated novel, Tasting Sunlight, this is subtle and evocative writing at its best. The simplicity of the story and the prose style belie the profound subtext of this beautiful coming-of-age story, where love, friendship and familiar relationships are all put under the microscope.
Most importantly, there is a generosity and joy to Arenz’s writing that is very rare in modern fiction. Maybe younger writers feel they have to show off or dazzle the reader with fireworks and drama. But One Grand Summer is all the more powerful for its understated and empathetic examination of a collection of characters and how their relationships to each other change over time. Resonant and moving fiction that manages to be intimate and profound at the same time.
Doug Johnstone is an author and journalist.
One Grand Summerby Ewald Arenz is out on 18 July (Orenda, £9.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.
