The Murder Farm

This short novel is ideally suited to being read in one sitting.It stays in the mind long after completion.Set in rural 1950's Germany, the narrator returns to an isolated community where a whole family and their maid have been slayed.Nobody in the community knows who is responsible, they have turned a blind eye just as doubtless they were used to doing living under the Nazis.The investigation takes the form of terse testaments from the villagers,and these are interspersed in the book with Christian devotions,which adds to the mood of inner bleakness.The reader can come to their own conclusion regarding the murderer on the basis of the testaments. The Murder Farm is an immensely creative and unusual novel, that deserves a wide readership.

The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel was a fantastic novel, don't get me wrong, but it could have been so much more. A great whodunit that keeps you guessing until the very end, and the description of the landscape around the farm in Germany was fantastic, creating an eerie atmosphere throughout.The style of the novel was very different too, all being done via interviews and diary entries as the main character, a journalist and the narrator of the story, tried to solve the crime. However, although this approach was different and intriguing, I felt that the author missed a great opportunity by writing from this viewpoint. By doing this, we got to find out very little of the narrator's viewpoints or world views, or indeed how the case was solved. For this reason I had to give it three stars, as it missed a lot of opportunity for the narrator to solve the crime.

After being thoroughly impressed with The Dark Meadow by Andrea Maria Schenkel last year I decided to treat myself to another of her slim novels. The Murder Farm is a recreation of a real crime in which the Gruber household were murdered in 1922. Having researched the details of this unsolved crime following my reading of the book it is clear that the author hasn’t strayed far from the known facts about the murders although she has chosen to set it in a slightly later time period.In 1950’s Germany The Murder Farm was home to the Danner family which consisted of the stern patriarch and farmer and his equally stand-offish wife. Their daughter Barbara Spengler was also slain along with her daughter Marianne and her baby son, Josef. It wasn’t only the family who lost their lives that night, the brand new maid Maria was also killed. Scarily the alarm wasn’t raised until the inhabitants of the village realised they hadn’t been seen since the previous Saturday and so a couple of their neighbours went to investigate, the scene that awaited them defied belief. Despite being viewed as remote and odd, there was no obvious reason why someone would choose to slay the entire household, or was there?Our nameless narrator returns to the village near the Black Mountains to try and discover what really happened.The story is told in a similar format to that of The Dark Meadow, with excerpts from the villager’s recall of the events, so we get to hear from one of Marianne’s school friends, a former employer of the maid, her sister, Marianne’s school teacher, a mechanic, the shopkeeper, the local farmers and the priest slowly building a picture of the characters within the household along with some of the local gossip that they ‘reluctantly’ revealed. What is really appealing about this device is that each person recalling the day has a clear personality and I could only wonder at how the author pulled this off in so few words, a lesson indeed to some authors who seem to think that more words makes for a better read!In addition to the recall of their neighbours we also get to hear from some of the victims too. So gradual is the way the details are revealed both in the background and the discovery of the murder scene, that it is not until the very end that it becomes clear who committed the awful crime and why.This is a very impressive read although because I’d read The Dark Meadow the format wasn’t as fresh this time, it did work well in this context. The translator should Anthea Bell deserves a special mention for her work as this is an immensely readable book and apart from the names I soon forgot that the original was in German. I will be looking out for more books by this author.

Fast service, book as described

This is a very promising first novel, and indicates that Schenkel will have much to offer in future years.The other reviews give a good indication of the content and style, so I'll confine myself to noting that the novel could be seen as an extended metaphor for the collective guilt often addressed in modern German literature, and the tendency of those embroiled in it to affect ignorance, incredulity and resignation. The multi-angled style of the narration is especially apropriate to this, and Schenkel is to be congratulated on a thoughtful and original contribution to the modern European novel.

The intrigue of The Murder Farm is created through the whodunit storyline and its telling. Taking a relatively novel approach, Schenkel tells the story through the voices of a number of people connected to the farm - the classmate of one of the children, the sister and former employer of the maid, local farmers, the shopkeeper, the local priest, and so on. Each has a distinct voice, with the text being a transcript of their account given to the faceless narrator. In tandem is the account in a distant third voice, including the incantation of prayers. The technique works well, and each voice is well crafted, the translator Anthea Bell doing a good job of translation. The story itself, however, is quite short and linear. Each person only speaks once and, as a result, the tale seemed a little underdeveloped, with little in the way of suspense. At no point is there a sense of what the narrator thinks happened and how this aligns or diverges from the third person account of what actually occurred. Overall, a story more noted for its telling and prose, than the tale itself.

Ausgezeichnete Geschichte. Elegant geschrieben. Anatomie eines kleinen, isolierten Bauerndorf nach dem 2ten Weltkrieg, von den Einwohnern erzählt, mit echten Stimmen.

Overall a pretty pointless, though not terrible read. The landscape imagery is very nice, the characters are somewhat interesting, but the story is told mostly via police interview transcript, which makes for a mostly flat, somewhat cliche, and far too underdeveloped story.

It is a mystery story, told in a new format. The characters are described. The statements of possible witnesses are taken.The reader is the detective.Drawback : requires careful reading and a good memoryI do not have these qualities, but still enjoyed the storyI never recommend. I will say : I liked it

Some one has murdered the Danner Family on their farm.Killed were the farmer, his wife, their daughter Barbara and her two small children. Plus Marie, the unluckiest maid in the world, who had just arrived at the farm that afternoon.Rumors abound about the family especially the questions as to exactly who fathered Barbara's two children.Robbery didn't appear to be a motive, so what other reason could there be to take the lives of 6 people.Highlights:This book is based on a famous unsolved murder case. Hinterkaifeck, a small homestead in Austria where in 1922 - the entire Gruber family, Andreas, his wife Cazilla - their daughter Viktoria, her two children Cazilia - 7 and Josef 2 - along with the maid Maria were killed with a pickax. There was also rumors that Andreas had fathered the two children with his daughter.This would have been an interesting non-fiction crime story to read.*Lowlights:Unfortunately, the author went to a fictional, book version. This is 168 page book, but that's only because the print is large. This is more along the lines of a short story. I don't know if this is supposed to be a mystery or just a fictionalized version of a true crme. There's no one really investigating anything, just everyone talking.The chapters go from the farm where nobody really does anything or says anything until they go off one by one to be murdered. You never get to know any of these people except the maid who travels out that day with her sister to start her job.The alternate chapters are by a different person in town talking about their impressions of the family and it seems like anything else that happens to come into their heads.You get the exciting version of the man who went out to the farm to do some repairs. How he didn't see anyone, how he tried the door, how he fixed the machinery. And how while he was getting something that fell into a cistern he thought he saw a shadow.The only person who said anything that was even slightly entertaining was the woman's description of having a French POW on her farm while he husband was away at war, which gives you some information on how the Danner family treated a Polish POW woman who was working on their farm.* * *This book won awards in Germany. I can only think that it's possible that what people in Germany find entertaining didn't translate well to me. They probably would think a lot of the books I enjoy are ridiculous.If you're looking for an entertaining book from Germany, check out Dust Angel - by Jetta Profijt. I found it hilarious, although not quite a mystery novel either.

Loved itCouldn't put it down. Great read.Interesting intermix of interviews of peripheral characters and narrators point of view.