How to Love the World by Ilka Tampke review – a woman is trapped by a fallen tree

The stuck narrator records the minutiae of the forest and her harrowing life in a purposeful novel that demands a slow read but doesn’t always reward it

A large branch falls to the forest floor one morning. Moments later, a woman named Nellika returns to consciousness. “Belly-down, cheek jammed against dirt, trunks horizontal, the track’s edge a disorienting vertical. She had opened her eyes to the world on its side.” The branch struck her across the back, and now she is trapped, in great pain. “How could it be a tree that had done this to her?” she wonders.

This event inaugurates the two timelines of Ilka Tampke’s new novel, How to Love the World. The first is the slow tick of the clock; subheadings record the time as it passes, with the tension of the novel achieved through the slow unfurling of this day. Will Nellika be able somehow to free herself? Will a prince appear? The novel is narrated in a very intimate third person, so there are no hints to the reader whether or not this is a survivor’s tale. I won’t puncture that suspense here.
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