Henning Koch

There are story tellers and then there are story tellers. And if you're like me then you'll find it harder and harder every time you go to a book store to sift through all the junk (more and more seems to be written and published and so it's not revolutionary to say that there's more and more junk in the book shops) and find the ONE book that you might like to have next to your bed perhaps or on your favorite little reading table across from the soft leather chair. The chair that smells like you and that has witnessed you reading some of the very best writing. The writing that was so good that it became a part of you. “Love doesn’t work” is by one of those storytellers, who produce real stories, stories you will remember & stories you want to remember. The opening story, "In Memoriam, Ingmar Bergman" already has some of the absurd comical originality that marks every story in this book and gives it character. I liked this story a lot, but my favorite I think is the last one, "Little Rabbit", which features Belsize Park, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham-Carter among many other characters and ends “like a long summer’s day”. If you follow Henning Koch down his personal rabbit-hole, you'll find out more, but not all, because he manages to conceal just enough. In fact, this isn't only "not junk", it is simply some of the best, clearest, most honest writing I've come across in a long time. And it's honest in the Heming-way, you know, the necessary detail and then some to get your own dream going. If it proves anything then it proves that Love Does Work at least when short stories are the love object.… (mehr)