Ferymont
German, Verbrecher Verlag, 2024
“The strange thing about that summer was that time flew by, but the individual hours in the field, in the tunnels or in the reprocessing centre just didn’t want to pass.”
“If you take a break, it’s harder to pick up again. If you don’t take a break, in a way you don’t have to start again.”
“Her movements seemed automated, but I thought I recognised a tenderness with which she seemed to greet, grasp and say goodbye to each chicken before placing it in the box.”
Solidarity at work. In her debut novel Ferymont, Lorena Simmel tells the story of a young woman who spends a summer helping with the harvest. She learns how solidarity and consideration can ease the hardships of labour.
The small town of Ferymont is located in a region between three lakes, known for its intensive agriculture. The cultivation of berries and vegetables is demanding because the produce has to be delivered fresh. The narrator grew up in the area without ever guessing what went on in the fields during the summer. Now, as a student in Berlin, she returns home to earn some money by working in them. For a few months she becomes part of a community that picks berries, harvests asparagus and brings in tobacco.
Nothing spectacular happens in Lorena Simmel’s novel. Her narrator observes and describes with calm composure how people from different backgrounds work together. The days are long, the piecework hard and sometimes mechanical in its efficiency, when thousands of flapping chickens are loaded into a lorry – for 50 francs an hour. The narrator settles into a routine in which only Sunday leaves her any time for housework, visits and relaxation. At the same time, however, as a local, she remains an outsider. Even her friendship with Daria from Moldova retains a shyness that indicates that it’s merely temporary.
As group leader, Daria is the heart of this working community, where everyone lends a helping hand. Solidarity comes naturally to her, as she demonstrates in one of the novel’s key scenes: when an inspector asks who delivered the bruised strawberries, she steps forward instead of the narrator and takes the blame. Work divides, but it can also unite, if the atmosphere is right. That may sound trivial, but it seems to be the point the author is trying to make. She paints a picture of a community of solidarity in which everyone tries to create a positive mood according to their own needs. Trust is not the result of personal intimacy, but of consideration and sympathy. There is no room for unnecessary agitation. Even the tragic death of Daria is deeply mourned, but not blamed on the working conditions. Lorena Simmel manages to capture this atmosphere in a linguistically harmonious way, always maintaining a subtle tension.
Text by Beat Mazenauer
- Title
- Ferymont
- Publisher
- Verbrecher Verlag
- Translation rights
- Kristine Listau, lizenzen@verbrecherei.de
- Publication date
- February 2024
- Pages
- 170
- ISBN
- 978-3-95732-580-8
- Awards
- Robert-Walser-Preis
Author
Lorena Simmel
Lorena Simmel was born in Fribourg in 1988 and grew up in Switzerland. She studied Literary Writing at the Swiss Literary Institute in Biel and European Literatures at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in Warsaw. She has published poetry, prose and essays in EDIT, Neue Rundschau and STILL, among others, and was a scholarship holder at the 16th Klagenfurt Literature Course. For her debut novel Ferymont, she received the Berlin Senate’s work stipend for literature. In 2022 she was a literary fellow of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation. Lorena Simmel lives in Berlin.
Photo: © Nane Diehl