Andreas Steinhöfel

Authors of novels aimed at the “teenager” or “young adult” shelves of bookshops may appear inclined to write down to their audience. This can even be the case when the writer has put her or his everything into the story’s telling. It’s a curious market tendency, particularly since the readers at whom such books are aimed have access to the full range of adult fiction, internet pornography and, at school at least, they will be labouring over the work of “great” poets, dramatists and novelists.

Andreas Steinhöfel has written a number of books presented in this market arena. This one, “The centre of my world” certainly fails to separate itself from fiction in general despite being intended for the “young adult” reader. Maybe it could be reclassified as just very good fiction within which the relationships represented are complex, keenly observed and lead to the kinds of difficulties that might be expected by anybody right through till life’s late time of lounging, drugged in front of television in the day room of some aged care establishment.

Within the story there exists the finely drawn “us” of a family and the more generalised “others” who represent the rest of the world. These others - actually a rather unknowingly judgemental social set - occupy a town on the far side of the river. Within the family Phil is seventeen and lives with Glass, who is his mother, and his twin sister, Dianne. Parents are usually presented as a problem for teenagers, even at the best of times, but this mother is both a particular type of problem and a remarkable source of strength. We meet her in the prologue, at Boston Harbour, pregnant and boarding a Europe bound liner so that she may join up with her sister Stella. Unfortunately, by the time she arrives in Germany Stella is dead. For Glass is it a blessing or just another of life’s difficulties that she is to inherit a run-down mansion, Visible, set in substantial grounds.

Then the twins are born.

Visible’s library becomes 'the center of the world' for Phil, while his father, over there in America, remains a totally unknown element in the boy’s life. There may be significance in the fact that this biological father is supposed to be the third name on Glass’s long list of lovers. And it is this abundance of romances that looms large in the consciousness of those too judgemental locals living on the river’s far side. Phil doesn’t appear to be worried about what other people think, he’s got enough problems of his own: foremost in his mind is the possible identity of a right lover for himself. At the center of the world he is waiting, longing for that moment.

One of this book’s many and extraordinary strengths is the presentation of a seventeen year old man’s emerging gay sexuality. Not pictured as something weird, or even particularly different, it certainly is not in the least perverse. This young man’s brooding wait for the person and the moment fits a pattern of longing and obsession that would apply if he were heterosexual.

Unaffected by the local people and their moral judgements, Glass holds true to her own values. She warns Dianne and Phil to 'Be strong and defend yourselves. Anyone who hurts you, hurt them back twice over or keep out of the way, but never let anyone tell you how you ought to live. I love you as you are.'

Once close, by degrees Dianne drifts away from her brother. She becomes even more withdrawn when forming a close bond with the girl, Kora - a friendship that takes her from the family’s house. It’s all rather strange, intriguing. Each step in the story seems as mysterious as is the physically scarred Uncle Gable, a mariner disinclined to stay in one place for very long. And, who is this Zephyr that Phil finds mentioned in letters when poking about in Dianne’s room? This is a fine book.

The Book

Steinhoefel, Andreas: The centre of my world / translated by Alisa Jaffa. –
London: ANDERSEN PRESS, 2006. - 480 pages.
ISBN: 9781842705865
Original title: Die Mitte der Welt (German)