Miss Nice's Short Summer

Karen Duve's laconic and ruthlessly dissecting novel revolves around the young poetess Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and the world of the last romantics who collected German fairy tales while the good old order around them crumbled. It is a portrait of a young woman in a world where nothing remained as it was. Miss Nette is a nuisance! At twenty-three years old, passionate, stubborn, and outspoken, she is the black sheep that refuses to fit into the herd of her noble relatives. While her aunts and cousins sit quietly by the fireplace stitching, she armed with a pickaxe ventures into the marl pits to search for minerals. The hems of her dresses are basically always dirty! But the worst part is her sharp tongue. When her uncle August's artist friends come to Bökerhof and discuss art and politics, she interjects without being asked. Wilhelm Gri.