Christian Kracht

 

Eurotrash -- Christian Kracht's novel of wealth, history, and guilt -- was not one that was known to me, but, enticed by its absurd cover, I took a chance. In some ways, Eurotrash is a successful book: its characters wrestle with tainted inheritance, with disturbing family associations, and with the question, ultimately, of when events transition to the broader realm of history. Eurotrash focuses on two characters -- a mother and son -- neither of whom is particularly well developed, but who function as types, as representations of wealth, or struggles against it. Parts of Eurotrash are effective, especially those focused on inherited guilt. But even those sections of the novel felt, to a certain extent, incomplete: it's one thing to cast a portion of a character's family as having been Nazis, or having benefited from the Nazi regime; but it's another to develop that story, and to trace its complexity into the present. It's not that Kracht has delivered an ineffective rendering of European wealth; instead, it's that he's delivered an incomplete novel, one that's propped up by dialogue, but which reads, at times, as shallow. Had this book been double the length, and had its characters succeeded in donating their tainted wealth, then maybe there might have been something profound to address; but that does not happen exactly, and the result -- for me, at least -- is a novel in search of itself, a book with solid scaffolding, but without the guts to call it complete.