Janine Adomeit | The pressure etched itself into consciousness

Parentification is the term used when parents assign tasks and responsibilities to their children that are not appropriate for their children. The term originates from psychotherapy and reflects the focus of this type of description of the disorder: It is purely about the relationship between parents and children. Parentification identifies a disturbed family relationship.

But is it that simple? Anne would probably say yes. Anne is one of the two main characters in "The First Half Hour in Paradise" by Flensburg author Janine Adomeit. Anne is pursuing a career at a pharmaceutical company and is otherwise as far removed from herself as possible: feelings bother her, interpersonal relationships are annoying – and if it's true that every person is an island, then she would like to be far out in the Pacific. But now she's at an internal company conference and will be giving a presentation on opioid-based pain therapy, which might allow her to move from field to office work. That would also be a career jump, but above all: working from home, with even fewer people.

But then her brother Kai calls, whom she hasn't seen in years; the last time was a chance encounter in a park. He was drunk, and she ran away. She has nothing to say to him, and he knows it, but he has no choice. He's just finished rehab and needs shelter for two days before he can move into his new place. And because he doesn't have many other connections left, he called his sister out of desperation.

As children, they were close, very close. She always looked up to Kai, who was seven years older, because he was everything to her: protection, comfort, support, inspiration. He was largely responsible for making her home Anne's happy place, even though—from the outside—she had a difficult childhood.

An estimated half a million minors currently care for family members in Germany.

Her mother is seriously ill with multiple sclerosis and is gradually losing her motor skills. She is a singer and was on the verge of suffering her first serious injuries on stage. After her illness, she moved to Flensburg with her two children and supports herself with singing lessons and smaller performances. Her illness is progressing at a rapid pace. Fearing that the youth welfare office will take her children away from her, she doesn't seek help and tries to cover up the effects of the various paralysis as much as possible. So she relies on her children's help, on their discreet complicity, as well as on them looking after her – and later on caring for her, showering her, holding her, and worrying about her.

This narrative takes place in the year 2000. It describes the reality of life for many young people, even today. An estimated half a million minors currently care for family members in Germany, and even though it briefly appeared that politicians were showing more consideration for family caregivers, the pandemic has shattered all illusions: Without exception, all children were driven back to school, regardless of their family environment, to become infected as quickly as possible under rudimentary protective measures. The mother is absolutely right in her caution and her suspicion that she has no one but her children: Disabled parents are considered nothing, as the measures have clearly shown.

The constant pressure gnaws at the children's consciousness: from within, that of the illness; from without, the lack of help and the fear of being taken away from the family, separated from their beloved mother. Some of the attempts to at least keep the situation in suspense are downright desperate: When the paralysis affects their mother's legs, Anne walks a few hundred steps more than necessary every day to add them to her mother's exercise account; so she can take a few more steps in life. Love on credit.

At the beginning of the summer holidays in 2000, his mother is scheduled to complete a rehab program lasting several weeks. Kai, she thinks, can look after his younger sister during this time. But the otherwise reliable and self-sacrificing Kai, who has just turned 18, has other plans: He signs on to a ship, both for the adventure and for love. He supplies his younger sister with kilos of junk food and takes off.

Anne, eleven years old, sits alone in her apartment, staring through the day. Fortunately, her mother terminates the rehab after two days; but when she learns that Kai has simply run away, she throws him out. Soon after, Anne goes to Berlin to live with her biological father, whom she has barely seen before. She will have little contact with Kai for years; her father (who is not Kai's father) prevents any contact.

Torn from life in this way, Anne cocoons herself and becomes this all-controlling businesswoman who gazes sharply and mercilessly at the world for which she feels no responsibility: She is only responsible for herself. When Kai calls, she doesn't want to answer; when he asks her for help, she's just annoyed. She ends up picking him up after all. In a summary like this, Kai sounds like a cliché: too much responsibility in childhood, then drugs, and the crash.

But Janine Adomeit hasn't written a caricature here. In the novel, Kai doesn't appear as a failure either; compared to Anne, he has emotionally processed his past much more comprehensively than his sister, who remains trapped in her trauma. The drug addict has a clearer perspective than the career woman, but can't achieve much with these insights: Thus, the helplessness of childhood and adolescence continues into adulthood.

Janine Adomeit manages to avoid overdramatizing all these conflicts and upheavals; she doesn't tell a tale of misery. Until those ill-fated summer holidays, Anne grew up protected and loved, despite the sometimes overwhelming responsibilities. Her mother simply needed a little more help—the kind of help that the welfare state still regularly denies disabled parents.

One of the book's strengths is that, contrary to the current trend toward autofiction, Janine Adomeit has written this highly political story not as a snippet of reportage, but as a true novel. This allows her to portray characters who are slightly out of touch and never seem pathetic.

Anne, for example, is coping; her tragedy is that she could have been happy if she had been allowed to. The fact that she later doesn't realize on her own that she has a responsibility for others, but instead wants to participate in something as dangerous as distributing a fentanyl patch for entirely selfish reasons, illustrates the spiral of impoverishment that arises when entire groups of people are excluded from support systems.

Janine Adomeit: The First Half Hour in Paradise. Arche-Verlag, 272 pp., hardcover, €23.