Dobes Zone

     I read The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek for the fab book club hosted by Annie Rose of the podcast Girls Guts Giallo and it was definitely one of the more challenging books. Stylistically, the text is quite dense and layered, flowing from one metaphor to another and shifting seamlessly between perspectives of omniscient narrator and different characters. Structurally it takes a very different approach to story-telling, though the events are all quite linear and easy to follow. Aside from its dense and descriptive nature, I actually found the actual content of the book more challenging than the style, which is used to intensify the emotional experience of the text.     Erika Kohut is a talented pianist in Vienna who never made it big in her field. Instead she teaches piano for a living and has a repressed and very controlled homelife with her domineering mother. The relationship between mother and mid-30s daughter is a very toxic and codependent one...

 Author's note: I haven't touched any creative writing project in years but I feel like the writing bug is back and has its mandibles sunk thoroughly into my brain. Here's the first of a few short stories. If there's enough interest and enjoyment I may release a short story collection on my itch site with accompanying illustrations.     Working from Home with Tippy by Dobes Crusher Life was quiet and cozy for Tippy the cat and her person, the human woman named Sarah. They lived together in a small house in the suburbs, a sleepy place with little noise and a fenced in yard that Tippy had access to through her cat door. The fence was a tall wooden one which Tippy knew she could scale easily, but on one side there were human children who Tippy didn’t really feel like meeting, and on the other was a dog that smelled like trouble. There wasn’t really any need to wander far when there were bushes to crawl under, bugs to catch, and warm patches of grass where she could sp...