In Aotearoa in the 1990s, many high school classes were still streamed by academic ability. Students sometimes meanly referred to the lower streams as cabbage classes. In English author Alice Jolly’s novel about non-verbal 12-year-old Adelheid Brunner, which takes place in the 1930s in occupied Vienna, Adelheid finds herself in a kinderklinic surrounded by fellow patients who, among other slurs, she refers to as cabbages.
Adelheid is an unreliable and often unlikeable narrator in a huge and complex narrative of war and institutions. In this dense novel, Jolly tackles some of Europe’s darkest and most mysterious secrets.
Many readers will recall that until recently a classification was added to what are now called autism spectrum disorders. Some people were diagnosed instead with what was known as Asperger’s syndrome. In the novel, the character of Austrian physician Hans Asperger, referred to as Dr A, is explored in depth as he rises through the ranks and becomes the head of a children’s behavioural clinic and, perhaps unwittingly, an arbiter of life and death during the Nazi regime.
Dr A’s story is told through the eyes of Adelheid, who communicates with the reader in an idiosyncratic, roundabout manner. She writes and draws, imbues inanimate objects with personalities, and repeats phrases and words as echoes in her head. She has an ambition with matchboxes. Adelheid, who is also struggling with grief for her missing grandfather, capitalises some words because they are Of Importance to her: “Fraulein Weiss’s clipboard slides from her hand. I am swallowing Freezing Water. Opa, can you help me? A siren sounds from the Street. Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with You. Garbled warnings are being whispered through the light fittings. My bones are turning to butter.”
This style can be jarring and opaque, and it takes a while to get used to sieving the sentences for meaning amongst Adelheid’s metaphors and obsessions.
Hundreds of children were labelled as not useful to society and brutally murdered or experimented on in Nazi clinics. Class and race, science and politics, sterilisation and eugenics, religion and ego clash in waves through these pages, and Jolly tries to show how each character reacts to the tumult. Beyond Adelheid and Dr A there are many Frauleins, Herrs and Drs to keep track of, as well as the patients and visitors to Adelheid’s family cafe, which may or may not be a socialist meeting house.
A lot of the story is told through overheard whispers and fragments of clinical notes, and much of it happens through Adelheid’s internal monologues, even though she – and the reader – often don’t really know what is going on.
Jolly has clearly entered into this sensitive subject with respect and done deep research. Despite her best efforts, however, no one can truly know how or why these people did what they did and felt what they felt. This makes the reading experience itself mysterious: who can the reader believe and who do we sympathise with? Which parts are truth and which fantasy?
Jolly even keeps herself hidden in this novel, taking the bold choice to tell the story through an autistic voice. And when working through the novel, readers may find themselves checking many things. Was Hans Asperger himself autistic? Was the Regulation for the Suppression of Wordless Children real? Who was Hitler’s sister? What really happened at Am Spiegelgrund? Be prepared for more questions than answers.
