First reaction: Oh noooo. "In a series with Michel Houellebecq and Virginie Despentes Marion Messina shows ..." Yes, it is a tough business, tens of thousands of new releases, for each book you have to somehow generate attention. But you have to as any 28-year-old debutante in the blurb with this-ton name hangings?

Good. Marion Messina self can't help it. So, at first open to read.

Second response: Also nah. "Alejandro was chartered with the dry mouth and the semi-rigid of a jam-up in the Morning." A Colombian in Grenoble. Lives on dusty 18 square meters. Is a narcissistic Lite dream rates come to Europe, uses his computer, but now only for the porn look. He has a cleaning job, and the opportunity to get the main character of the book, for the first time to face. More specifically, your Buttocks: "On the ground, kneeling, reaches out for him the ass, while she cleaned under a bed." Note: the male gaze, can always and only A.

Aurelie, the owner of the stretched out towards the butt, comes from Grenoble. It is at the beginning of the narrow novel, 18 years old, has dutifully made the Abitur, because they told her that a working child, all doors are open as you in the Land of Egalité. Now you finally studied law, but feels like the wrong life movie: "Something she had missed, even though they had followed all the instructions and the way had remained of the Republic of the faithful. She was diligent, disciplined, consistent and open. You just wanted to achieve something and waited for something to happen. But it happened nothing."

The new Generation remain pathetic service jobs and on the weekend, dreary techno parties.

That's all told right template, parents, sketch, two pages, migrants, quarter ditto, and it seems as though Marion Messina would upgrade its young heroine on the way to life with nothing more than a paper-thin these coats Chen: came The simple, but solid coordinates, in which Aurélies parents were able to set up reasonably, for a long time to Slide or completely gone. The new Generation remain pathetic service jobs and at the weekend techno parties, the empty function as each of the Carrefour car Park on Sunday evening.

Alejandro and Aurélie know in each case that you do not have a place of their own. You ashamed of your origin, you will notice that she is wearing the wrong clothes, but has no idea how to fix it with the small Differences between scores. He should be one of this migrant family to meet projects: One comes to have success in Europe, and then, Alejandro, "do we dare admit that we serve a Hamburger fry and beer to pay for a pathetic mini-apartment".

Aurélie hopes to find in the relationship with Alejandro performance, but wants to bind to. When he managed to get a scholarship in Lyon, he immediately the case. You flush it to Paris, where the money will be enough only for a bed in the hostel, starting as a Hostess in one of the monotonous Défense towers, and at least here, you realize when you read that, you followed this young woman but at some point in their history, so sarcastic, as she accompanied her own will Fail, so exactly how Absurd that describes how ridiculous their actions.

In a high-rise building of the dreary Défense district in Paris, Aurélie works as a Hostess. Photo: Corbis via

"The hostesses had no tasks, but customers do not saw that someone was paid for doing nothing. You had to stare at the Computer without an Internet connection, and with a concentrated face endless solitaire games. In the display of jobcenter, the Aurélie had answered, that no education was an accepted high school."

Here in Paris, the city of the big differences, grows, portrait of Marion Messina's book to a successful Generation, the descriptions are filled from the inside out with life, as you would a picture slowly from the back of the paper, the colors and shades in the sketch by pauses.

Marion Messina hails from Grenoble. In France, their debut was celebrated in 2017, enthusiastic, even at that time, the Name of houllebecq fell into the reviews again and again. This is partly due to the disillusioned hardness, with the two years spanning the end of "false start" to life is told, and the literary hybrid of novel and Essay. Messina among many of the scenes feeds with sociological comments and comes to similar conclusions as Houellebecq in his debut "extension of the combat zone".

Aurélies life technical bad luck is that she has a heart: The cynicism of a Houellebecq is foreign to her.

economic and sexual liberalism work in a similar way, a few get everything: feelings are relics from an earlier time that no longer fit in the neon, cold presence, or as it is called in Messina once: "No responsibility, no obligation, on the logic of mobile telephony-deals-oriented sex life."

Aurélies life technical bad luck is that she has a heart Of Houellebecq cal cynicism is in all its serenity, in the bottom of your heart, but foreign. Messina's literary pitch is in some of the love scenes in a lot of Kitsch off, what you seem to know: The emphatic love letter, in which Aurélie is revealed to her boyfriend, she throws on the next day in a garbage bag.

Aptly Messina describes how Aurélie wears off over time internally and on a daily basis don't get that you can't hear here, Yes that your self, so something as Basic as ambition, to deserve basically. Caste remains at the end only the humility that has then dressing in front of himself as a reason.

In the wrong family

Messina was born actually speaks of "caste" and thus en passant to understand that the classes are after a few decades of social transmittance, is now so inflexible and impermeable, such as in a God-given Plan. Aurélie might have for your resume the correct financial statements drawn up – she was born into the wrong family.

the Whole thing is Translated by the so-tireless as brilliant Claudia Steinitz, local readers known as the German voice of Virginie Despentes' "Vernon Subutex". Prior to the comparison with this epoch-making trilogy, you should keep Marion Messina's small, fine debut, but then.

Marion Messina: false start. Roman. From the French by Claudia Steinitz. Carl Hanser, Munich, 2020. 168 p., CA. 24 Fr.

Created: 05.03.2020, 12:11 PM