Wow, this was bizarre. I never would have guessed from the cover/title/reviews/summary that this was so irreverent, mostly incomprehensible, and truly outlandish. I struggled to even follow the content of the dialogue. But I was glued, and I blew through this just to figure out more (and succeed even less in understanding) what was actually happening. Surprisingly tender at the end toward an ailing mother who fluctuates between delusion and reality (partly as a result of her old age but also partly from just being generally loony). I wanted more from the narrator though — either decide to let your narrator be a blank canvas in the present or give me some back story, but definitely don’t give me

two whole mentions of a wife and child and also possible queer backstory and also a career as a novelist

in the in-between. This book is very German/Swiss-German core  (extremely preoccupied with family histories of Nazism, etc) and also extremely bourgeois (I had to look up a lot of name-drops and locations) (also ironic (but I think self-consciously so) given the sort of bourgeois satire it’s attempting). Confusing to try to formulate an opinion on this. Hrumph.