The Piano Teacher     by Elfriede Jelinek, Translated by Joachim Neugroschel Original title: Die Klavierspielerin Original language: German Published by Serpent's Tail Pub. Date: 2002 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.77 x 7.78 x 5.12 ISBN: 1852427507 List Price: $12.00, £6.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £5.59 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.20 Published by Serpent's Tail Pub. Date: 1989 Format: Paperback List Price: £7.95 Not available for ordering

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At the centre of this novel is the destructive and pathological relationship between a mother and her daughter. Erika has been moulded by her mother from earliest youth to be a famous concert pianist. Failing to satisfy this ambition she now works as a piano teacher in Vienna.

The mother-daughter relationship described by Jelinek is monstrous: mother and daughter live in the same apartment, where they share a double bed. This enables the mother to make sure that the daughter never touches herself improperly. Her greatest fear is that Erika should fall in love with a man who would then in turn take her away from her mother and destroy her mother’s plans for her. She therefore makes sure Erika hardly ever goes anywhere without her supervision, and if she does, she will phone her at her destination to check up on her. Also, she strictly discourages, and if that does not work, actively forbids, Erika’s spending time with anybody other than herself. When Erika does come home late, or does something forbidden like buying herself a new dress, mother and daughter fight, wrestling and pulling out each other’s hair. All this is even more disturbing, considering that Erika’s age in the novel is given as at least thirty-five years of age.

The mother has been systematically destroying her daughter’s personality and has hindered any kind of healthy growth of self. But instead of focusing all her daughter’s energies into her piano playing, she has unwittingly made it impossible for her daughter to thrive musically. The model into which she tries to press her daughter is bound to and even meant to be unsuccessful — really, she is destined only for failure, to satisfy the mother’s longing to see her daughter fail as she had failed herself.

Together, they are united in the obsessive belief that Erika is a genius to be protected against a hostile world which is trying to distract her and destroy that genius. In turn Erika is scared at every sign of real talent from any of her students and duly suppresses it, making sure they will only ever reach mediocrity. Mother and daughter cannot bear the thought of something thriving, being healthy, because they themselves have been stifled in their growth.

Erika does not rebel openly, but resorts to more secret and furtive escape routes: she makes intricate plans like pretending to visit a concert, and then goes to see peepshows, the only female intruder into a world of cheap thrills and soiled tissues. These excursions advance to Erika spying on couples on the Prater meadows, armed with binoculars. Her new assertiveness progresses into an attempt to embark on a sado-masochistic relationship with one of her students. Unfortunately, she puts him off by handing him a list detailing suggestions of how she might best be tortured and humiliated. Having known nothing else she can only relate to pain and as she has no experience of human understanding, warmth or passion they are therefore meaningless to her.

At the same time, she is afraid of really being hurt, and therefore manages effectively to close the door on any affection the student might otherwise be prepared to give her.

After the student duly beats her up and leaves in disgust, she resigns herself to the failure of her social experiment and retreats to her mother.

Although it sometimes feels like Jelinek is merely caricaturing human relationships so that her characters become rather hard to believe in on the whole her observations are original and sharp, and often quite funny.

‘Mother grabs a light-blue angora jacket that she crocheted herself and drapes it over Erika’s shoulders. The lubricant mustn’t suddenly freeze in these joints, raising the frictional resistance. The little jacket is like a cozy over a teapot. Sometimes useful things like toilet-paper rollers have such homemade caskets on them, with colourful pom-poms. They decorate the rear-windows of cars. Right in the centre. Erika’s pom-pom is her head, which looms proudly. She trips along on her high heels across the smooth ice of the inlaid floor (areas subject to great stress are protected today by cheap runners). Erika heads toward an older colleague in order to receive congratulations from expert lips. Mother gently pushes her forward. Mother has a hand on Erika’s back, on her right shoulder blade, on the angora jacket.’ p68-69