Teenage boy lost connection to his world and starts blogging as a school project, or rather journal writing because he never publishes a thing. The reader spends 142 pages inside the teenagers journal and head. This being a teenager’s head there’s no narrative arc really, just teenage slang, angst and endless second-guessing of themself and others. This novella (billed as a novel) was originally published in 2017, I read the 2024 pocket version. I picked this book in German up in a Zürich book store this week from the Swiss literature section, where it was hailed as a recent ‘classic’. It was ok, mostly because it was short anyway, but not recommended. Had it been longer I probably would have left it unfinished. The reason it gained attention in Switzerland seems to be its use of teenage and informal language as an apparant novelty. I think in other languages that sort of thing is decades old, no?

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