the piano teacher: Elfriede Jelinek

The novel felt like a dark maze to me. No sooner did I reach the 20th page, I wanted to throw the book into a dust bin. I couldnt attach myself to anybody in the story. Not even a single incident seemed distinctly familiar. The protagonists are all Austrian. The book is like a Nazi concentration camp with the characters alternating the roles of tormentors and victims. My whole mindset was disturbed. But anyway I've read it in full.

Erika Kohut, a whirlwind as her mother calls her, loves and hates her mother with the same intensity. In her late thirties, still unmarried and a virgin, still under the constant control and interrogation of her mother, she begins to lead a secret life to fulfill her sensual appetite. In the meantime her attraction towards Walter Klemmer, her student who was only trying to take advantage of her, becomes uncontrollable. In this book, the author paints a person who cant help herself. She is a perverted human being, carrying the scars inflicted in childhood, unable to be herself even in adulthood and who draws saddistic pleasure from torturing others mentally and physically.

Positives I saw
>>Good language
>>Complex thoughts some described in a natural way with uncliche'd allusions
>>Importance to every nuance of behaviour
The portrayal is strong and powerful. I havent come across anything close to 'the piano teacher' in that sense till now.
I couldnt understand the piano teacher. But the author is a connoisseur.

Maybe I should have read it a little later in my life.