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Scotsman
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Ripeness, by Sarah Moss review: 'feels somehow fabricated'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... This is a terribly accomplished novel, and I am unsure if that is a compliment or a criticism. It has an affecting core scenario, some extremely engaging writing, some very interesting observations; and yet I found it, at some gut level, manufactured, or as if it had palpable designs on eliciting a particular response. Moss has written eight other novels, and is much admired by novelists whose opinion I respect, and yet this felt somehow fabricated. It has the kind of realism that makes you mistake a Blaschka glass flower for the real thing. Ripeness has one central character but two distinct modes. In the present day and the third person, Edith is living in rural Ireland, divorced but in a happy and uncomplicated relationship with a German Marxist potter. A friend of Edith's is contacted by a possible step-sibling, and this triggers first-person recollections of her unusual gap year in the 1960s, away from her father's Derbyshire farm, when before going to Oxford she was in Italy, attending the final weeks of her glamorous, ballet dancer sister Lydia's unwanted pregnancy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sarah Moss The reader is, of course, supposed to see the visible seams stitching the stories together. There is an element of intrigue in that the first person reminiscence is addressed to an initially nebulous 'you': 'I should be clear that I'm not the one you want either. You shouldn't get your hopes up. We'll come to that'. The reader is, in effect, reading a private correspondence (and the identity of the addressee is not exactly difficult to discern). The rise of personal computers even means that the 'letter' is not at the credulity-stretching length of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Likewise, the third person sections slip effortlessly into close focus, internal monologue; as if the whole novel is an intrusion of sorts. Moss's previous works have a feature (not quite a formula) of setting political events against the personal. The Fell had the lockdown, Summerwater had Brexit amongst other apocalypses, Ghost Wall had Iron Age re-enactment alongside un-pretend toxic masculinity and The Tidal Zone featured an NHS in crisis paralleled to the post-war rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. This time, the ideas of home, belonging and inheritance are sufficiently baggy to have debates about 'good' (Ukrainian, white) refugees versus African ones alongside the intimate details of adoption, empty nests and disconnection. I am always uncertain if such neat matrices of meaning arise naturally from a narrative, or are trimmed and stapled to fit. Indeed, I am increasingly sceptical about the 'aboutness' of novels. The ballet, and to a lesser extent the pottery, offer a lexicon of terms and a stock of images that can be co-opted for symbolism. The idea, for example, of the 'kinesphere' – 'the space claimed by bodily movement' – is a readymade image to be translated onto various poses, postures, intimacies, indignities and distances. The title is again semantically fully loaded. It is literal in the figs, 'which I only knew dried and chopped in suet puddings' (a choice little piece of characterisation), to the metaphor for pregnancy as well as the cusp-y nature of the younger self, through to a sense of late life fulfilment. It appears within the text in a strange (and extremely clever) aside. Moss/Edith has noted the curious parallel of Hamlet's 'the readiness is all' and Edgar in King Lear's 'Ripeness is all' – prefaced by 'men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither', appropriately enough. Much could be said about this, but isn't. Edith says she 'managed to get into my Oxford entrance exam, my idea that Lear is a darker play than Hamlet'. Ye-e-e-e-es: but it's hardly an original idea that Lear is darker than Hamlet. Samuels Johnson and Taylor Coleridge would agree. Are we supposed to read this ironically, as evidence of Edith's naivety and unearned superiority? But it is, with the limits of the novel, written by the elderly Edith: is she concurring? Unaware? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There are many memorable, shrewd notes: a marble bathroom is 'a room carved out of Stilton cheese', Edith chafes at A-level Italian including terms for 'nuclear deterrent' but not nappy, a child's 'sea-anemone mouth'. Young Edith brims with Eliot, Brontë, Milton and Hopkins in a convincing way, although the Older Edith talking about her friends 'Dearbhla from the Samaritans, and… Clare from a short-lived Dante reading group, Clare who was from the North via Modern Language at Cambridge' seems almost parodic. More seriously, there is a backstory about Edith's errant mother, who avoided the Holocaust and ends up on a kibbutz, which may have broad links to bohemianism, identity, duty versus free-spiritedness, but smacks of being the kind of thing that tends to occur in novels. Towards the end, Edith muses that 'Wouldn't it have saved the Third Reich some work, to be able to pull us all from a spreadsheet?' It's a throwaway line except IBM/Dehomag did precisely that. The patina of ballet references have a similar feel, and many of the ways in which they are deployed – weightlessness, elegance, pain – are handled more full-heartedly in a novel like Amélie Nothomb's The Book of Proper Names. Although there is much to appreciate here, it would be remiss not to warn the reader that it ends rather bathetically.
Al Jazeera
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘We will be a loud voice': Leftist leader Reichinnek woos young Germans
Berlin, Germany – In the weeks leading up to the German election, Friedrich Merz, the man tipped to become chancellor, broke a longstanding, cross-party firewall that blocked cooperation with the far-right, anti-immigrant party, the Alternative For Deutschland (AfD), to push through tougher migration legislation. Political pressure had been piling after two deadly attacks within a matter of weeks, reportedly carried out by men who had sought asylum in the country. While the legislation was ultimately blocked, the move prompted condemnation from across the political spectrum, including from former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, like Merz, belongs to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In an impassioned speech in the Bundestag, the German Parliament, a visibly outraged Heidi Reichinnek, co-governor of the Left party known as Die Linke, lambasted Merz directly for working 'deliberately'' with 'rightwing extremists'. 'All this happened only two days after we commemorated the liberation of Auschwitz, two days after commemorating the murdered and tormented. Now you're collaborating with those who carry on this same ideology,' she said. The speech went viral, with more than seven million views on TikTok, and pushed Reichinnek to the top of national news agendas. Coverage focused on the fallout, but also the social media presence and style of the self-described socialist, feminist and anti-fascist who is adorned with tattoos – including an inking of the German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg. As the election drew closer, Reichinnek doubled down on her progressive push, meeting with a prominent queer influencer, posting regularly to her hundreds of thousands of social media followers, criticising Merz further, and speaking out about housing costs and the AfD. The strategy paid off. In the February 23 election, Die Linke polled at 9 percent, more than doubling its voter share from the last election in 2021, with a reported quarter of young people backing it. It was the highest figure for any party among this demographic. Speaking to Al Jazeera following the result, Reichinnek, who shares the leadership with Soren Pellmann, said it was an incredible achievement not just for Die Linke, but for everyone who stood up for 'social justice, solidarity, and democracy'. 'The fact that so many people have joined the party, that hundreds of thousands took to the streets to defend human rights, and that we were able to reach so many new voters shows that there is real momentum for progressive politics in Germany. 'But this is just the beginning. Elections are important, but they are not the end goal – they are a step in a much bigger fight. The cost of living crisis isn't over, social inequality is still growing, and the far right is still a threat. That's why we will continue to be a loud and uncompromising voice in parliament and on the streets,' said Reichinnek. Commentators are crediting the 36-year-old for playing an integral role in Die Linke's electoral resurgence following internal struggles. In 2023, one of its high-profile leaders, Sahra Wagenknecht, quit and in 2024, low polling figures in the European and regional elections had many writing off the party. 'It was astonishing to see this rise of Die Linke, which seemed doomed to death last year,' Stefan Marschall, a political scientist at the Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf told Al Jazeera. 'What happened, especially during the last mile of the campaign, was that Die Linke was able to mobilise a lot of young people. And Reichinnek's role was important, her communication strategy was very clear and addressed certain issues, such as the high housing costs and the resurgence of the far-right, which many young people are concerned about.' 'Up until now, the AfD had been unchallenged on social media,' said Moheb Shafaqyar, a Die Linke member in Berlin. The district he is active in, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, upended the Green party seat, a high-profile left-wing result nationally. 'While in Germany and globally there is a frightening trend of young people voting for the right, in this election we have seen a trend reversal.' East German roots Born in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in 1988, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Reichinnek was interested in politics and a fair society from her teenage years. 'At the top of the list of things that frustrated me are the Hartz IV laws (unemployment reforms), which I want to abolish,' she said in a 2022 interview. 'Equality for women is just as important to me as effective and better child and youth welfare and basic child benefits that support poor families.' Between 2007 and 2011, she studied Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. During this period, she spent time in Cairo as the so-called Arab Spring broke out. 'I was amazed at what people can achieve when they stand together,' she said of Egyptian protesters. She engaged in further academic pursuits, including as a research assistant on a project looking at transformation in Arab societies, and periods working in the social sector, including teaching German to refugees, before she joined Die Linke in 2015. She became a member of the Left faction in Osnabrueck in northwest Germany a year later. Here she took on roles such as spokesperson for a self-described socialist, feminist, anti-fascist and ecological grassroots initiative. She rose through the party ranks. At the state party conference in Lower Saxony in 2019, she received the support of more than 86 percent of delegates, making her the party's youngest state chairwoman. Two years later, she was elected to the Bundestag on the Lower Saxony state list, working on issues such as pensions and youth, women's and family policy ever since. 'An East German background is still an exception in Germany's political sphere,' said the political scientist, Marschall. 'Her background in an East German working-class household also highlights that she did not enter politics from a position of privilege, making her engagement with social policy issues significantly more authentic.' The timing of her ascent as Die Linke faced internal strife also helped her trajectory. A bad result in the 2021 federal election followed by disagreements over its position on immigration and later Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine contributed to the departure of Wagenknecht and a cohort of colleagues, who formed a new party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) last year. Ozger Ozvatan is the head and co-founder of the diversity and inclusion agency Transformakers, and the author of Jede Stimme Zaehlt (Every Vote Counts, 2025) based in Berlin. He said during this difficult time for the party, opportunities emerged. 'Wagenknecht was against immigration and after she left, there was a chance for the progressive and pro-immigration voices within the party to become bigger and move the party towards more liberal immigration policies.' The other factor, Oezvatan said, was the Israel-Palestine conflict, which led to further departures. 'There was another window of opportunity for human rights activists to make it a more pro-Palestinian and Israel-critical party. To the general public, this made Die Linke look more progressive and human rights-oriented.' Reichinnek was active on social issues and engaging with the electorate on- and offline. 'She is an authentic voice for social policy because of her work so far in the field,' Ozvatan said, 'plus she was already seen as a social media star before the election campaign period, and this undermined the position that politicians only go on TikTok because it's an election campaign.' 'She gets close to people, and she seems to be very honest and very frank in the way she talks, which we saw in the speech to Merz,' added Marschall. 'And that's very attractive to people who are used to older, more controlled and unemotional political figures.' It's a style that has resonated with Die Linke voters such as Lina Mueller*, a 34-year-old counsellor in a pregnancy advice centre, who requested Al Jazeera to use a pseudonym due to the sensitive nature of her work. 'Reichinnek stands for a younger generation of the party while at the same time continues to fight older Left battles around social justice and anti-abortion legislation. She doesn't use strategies to get more votes from AfD voters in the way that Wagenknecht does. While they both seem like populists, Reichinnek comes across as very convincing.' As the post-election dust settles and Germany contends with a recession-facing economy and a re-energised far-right, Reichinnek's party has 'a lot of energy at the moment, and she's one of the batteries', Marschall said. According to party member Shafaqyar in Berlin, the party line has an invigorating sense of clarity. 'Reichinnek is concerned about the issues, not personal vanity and power for the sake of power. I hope it stays that way.'
