The collapse is followed by a new beginning. Kristine Bilkau's award-winning novel "Halbinsel"

There's the memory, a fear that Annett can't shake whenever she thinks back to her daughter Linn's upbringing, to the moments when, at one and a half years old, she daringly climbed a flight of stairs. This worry hasn't changed much even after almost half a century. Annett is now in her late forties, works in a library, and lives in a village of 1,300 people on a peninsula in the North Frisian Wadden Sea. Her twenty-four-year-old daughter Linn, on the other hand, has just started a job in Berlin after graduating from university, working for a consulting firm that promotes and finances environmental projects.

Kristine Bilkau's novel "Halbinsel" (Peninsula)—recently awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize—begins with a shocking moment. Linn collapses during a lecture. Annett picks her up from the hospital and takes her to her Wadden Sea cottage. The daughter is supposed to rest for a week, but this ultimately turns into four months filled with subliminal conflicts.

In sometimes tough conversations, tinged with subtle accusations, the two try to get closer to each other and—a few boxes they've found help in this—rekindle memories. Especially of Johan, Linn's father, who collapsed while jogging almost 20 years earlier and died completely unexpectedly. His presence in Annett's thoughts hasn't changed in all that time.

Kristine Bilkau excels at penetrating her protagonists' emotional tangles with nuance, ignoring no change or repression. It gradually emerges that Linn resigned from her Berlin position shortly before her lecture, dissatisfied with what her employer was doing for climate protection beyond fine words. She doesn't know what she wants to do in the future. Initially, she avoids her mother, retreats listlessly to her room, and takes a job at the village bakery. The aspiring scientist as a brown bread seller—this exceeds the imagination of her horrified mother.

Annett can barely contain her maternal care. She suffers with her daughter, wants to ward off all possible dangers, and doesn't always give the advice she asks for—a pattern Linn recognizes: "How you couldn't stand it before when I was sad or exhausted. It was exhausting for you. There was a constant drive. An underlying pressure." Mother and daughter are engaged in a battle, not one that escalates, but one that relentlessly reopens old wounds.

Kristine Bilkau's novel is clever, coherently conceived, and at the same time walks a tightrope. It's not easy to integrate Linn's commitment to climate protection into the plot without creating the impression that the author is trying to convey well-intentioned messages.

"Halbinsel" almost always avoids this danger, and this is largely because the North Frisian landscape is more than just decorum. Just as Linn studied animated world maps on the internet as a teenager to see which parts of her homeland would be flooded in a few decades, hiking through the mudflats brings to the surface ancient myths – for example, the legendary settlement of Rungholt, which sank in the 14th century and was immortalized by Detlev von Liliencron in his ballad "Trutz, blanke Hans."

After four months of unfamiliar togetherness, Linn and Annett find themselves at a crossroads in their lives. The new experiences have clarified many things. In particular, the introverted Annett must decide what she wants to do in the future. She finally dares to step out of her shell when she approaches a group home in the neighboring building. At first, she suspiciously observes the members, who live from day to day and earn their living by clearing out houses. But gradually, she begins to wonder whether their serenity might not be desirable. That Annett then promptly goes to bed with a young man from the group is, of course, somewhat surprising.

"Halbinsel" is a clever novel, topical in its restraint, whose style, the typical, pared-down Bilkau sound, skillfully places the hidden and unspoken between the lines. The vastness of the Wadden Sea reflects the vastness of the novel.

Kristine Bilkau: Peninsula. Novel. Luchterhand-Verlag, Munich 2025. 224 pp., CHF 34.90.