Cherrypicker | Literature  Between Love, Passion and Suffering

Domestic violence often leaves victims helpless. People, mostly men, cross boundaries that should never have been crossed. Ruth-Maria Thomas has turned this tough subject matter into a tender and light-footed novel.

These are the hottest days of the year. Jella and Yannik enjoy their last day of holiday and watch the sunset, which colours everything pink, “like the beer with raspberry sherbet in our glasses”. With the music of the bad cover band that accompanied dinner still in their ears, they walk down to the lake. They want to cool off. Die schönste Version (The most beautiful version), the debut novel by Ruth-Maria Thomas, begins with this sweet and sugary scene. Reading the first few pages, you might quickly think it's a cheesy romance novel to match the pastel-coloured cover. But this cover also shows a crack through which the face of a sad woman can be glimpsed. There seems to be a second, less beautiful truth.

You find out about the “crack” in Jella and Yannik's story in the very first chapter – it starts at the police station. Jella is there to report an incident of domestic violence. She answers the officer's questions mechanically, as she can't make sense of many of them herself. In the days following the assault, Jella searches for answers. How could her relationship become the worst version? She looks back on her youth in a small East German town, her first friendships, parties and relationships. And she remembers the beginning with Yannick, whom she met when she was 21. It is a female coming-of-age story that contains not only beautiful experiences and tender moments of happiness, but also experiences of violence.

The Blame Never Lies With the Victim, It Always Lies With the Perpetrator

It all starts with the looks of boys and men. Jella and her new best friend Shelly feel them very keenly as they enter puberty. It's a new kind of attention that they receive. They feel that they are perceived as “women” and always want to live up to this. Today we would say that the two young women have internalised the “male gaze”. Male gaze is a term from feminist film theory and stands for a male, sexualising gaze. It has also become an integral part of the vocabulary of younger generations in the discourse on sexism.

One example of the constant working off of the male gaze is Jella and Shelly's tradition on rainy days. They put their pillows on the windowsill, painted their nails, ate strawberry ice cream with vanilla sugar – and turned the windowsill into their stage:
It seems like extreme and perhaps overconfident behaviour. But you can't blame Jella and Shelly, as they grew up in a time when girls and women were more or less subtly told from all sides that it was all about pleasing the heterosexual man. It was the time of Britney Spears, Bravo Girl and Girls, which ran articles such as “10 tips on how to be more attractive to your crush!”, “What boys really like in girls!”, “How to make him want you!”. But the constant struggle to please, to be desired and to be seen soon leads to Jella finding herself in situations where men cross boundaries with her that should never have been crossed. What remains is helplessness and agonising questions about “guilt”: Should she have said no more clearly? Was her shoving away too timid, too playful? And hadn't she also provoked the assaultive behaviour with her short skirt?

Jella asks herself similar questions after Yannik's assault: Had she provoked him? Had she been a bad friend? The novel doesn't formulate any answers, but the detailed retelling of their relationship helps us understand why Jella finds it difficult to report her boyfriend. After all, the man who put his hands around her neck was the same man who smiled and surprised her with biscuits during a break at her library job just so he could spend 20 minutes with her.

In 2024, the Federal Criminal Police Office announced that the number of cases of domestic violence recorded by the police had risen almost continuously, by a shocking 19.5 per cent in the last five years. Against the backdrop of these sad statistics, this novel, which is written so delicately and light-footedly despite its tough subject matter, becomes all the more relevant. Because while even the most overwhelming figures always remain abstract in the end, Ruth-Maria Thomas has written a story in Die schönste Version that makes one thing very clear and tangible: the victim is never to blame. It always lies with the perpetrator.
 

June 2025