Serpent's Child (STUDIES IN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE, CULTURE, AND THOUGHT. TRANSLATION SERIES)

This is a coming-of-age novel that is set in a farming village near Klagenfurt and in Salzburg, Austria during the later 1970s. Its sure sense of place and time and its psychological acuity suggest the intimacy of autobiographical experience that knows how traditions of patriarchal abuse and the dictates of conformity disfigure a seemingly idyllic milieu. A person of inquisitive intelligence, Truschner's protagonist observes the dynamics of dysfunctional relationships with the dispassionate objectivity of an outsider and the tenderness of a wounded, disoriented sensitivity in search of human closeness.