Vicki Baum: Danger From Deer

[vamp_reads]

Danger from Deer (1951) - Vor Vor Rehen wird gewarnt as it is called in German - was the first novel by author Vicki Baum that I read. I spent the whole year both with finding less travelled literary paths and reading more fiction from the 20th century, which somehow is a period I neglected in the past. (Spoiler: I now find that a lot of amazing stuff has been written in the last century. Go figure.)

So, my fist outing with Vicki Baum! She was born in 1888 in Vienna and seemed to have been very firmly rooted in “artsy” circles. Her first husband was an author and journalist, her second husband was a conductor. She herself played the harp but stopped pursueing that seriously in favour of her second husband’s career. She had also been writing ever since her teenage years.

That isn’t to say that she couldn’t get down and dirty. Apparently she went to a boxing club in Berlin and trained there with a Turkish prize boxer. Obviously a woman with surprising talents and interests ...

Her first novel was published in 1914, her biggest international hit came about in 1929 - Grand Hotel or Menschen im Hotel. She went to the USA to oversee the Broadway production based on that novel and promptly stayed, maybe in anticipation of what would happen politically in Europe. She was Jewish and the Nazis banned her books in 1935. California was the safer place for her. Baum became an American citizen in 1938 and wrote her later novels in English.

This is also the case for Danger from Deer. The novel was published in 1951 and was originally written in English. The German audiobook I listened to was a translation, even though I couldn’t really pinpoint whether it was an old or new translation. The title refers to a note in an English park warning visitors about the dangers of approaching the deer, especially during mating season. It plays with the assumption that deer are peaceful, docile and cute when in fact they aren’t - just like one of the main characters in this book.

The plot centers around Ann Ambros, a turn of the century woman who portrays herself as a weak, fearful and meek person with a penchant for headaches and fainting. This little hypochondriac streak might (or might not) stem from Baum’s own life - apparently, her father was a hypochondriac. Ann is playing up her physical ailments (or is inventing them in the first place) to push her own agenda. In short, she’s the proverbial manipulative bitch. If you like characters like Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair or Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind you’ll have a lot of fun with Baum’s novel. If scheming and plotting women aren’t quite your thing, you should probably better skip this one, because Baum’s protagonist is infuriatingly good at what she does.

Danger from Deer follows Ann Ambros’ life through her own and through her (step)daughter’s eyes and the reader learns how her machinations are always meant to further herself and her status - mostly through the people around her. And yes, we’re talking about the men in her life. However, we’re also talking about her daughter, who suffers under her stepmother’s thumb and whose agenda is to save her brother from their mother’s influence.

In my opinion, the narration and the choices of perspective are needlessly convoluted and complicated. We have a frame that starts and ends the novel, we have a first part following Ann’s life and then we have a second part following her daughter Joy. In those parts we have little tidbits that go back and forth in time and that inform about certain plot points that somehow didn’t come up in the other half of the narrative and in the end we have two minor characters suddenly showing up and finishing off the book. Confused yet? Yes … I agree. This could have been handled in a smoother manner, but her overall style and her extremely three-dimensional characters more than made up for that for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, because while the main focus is definitely on Ann and her manipulative ways, there are also other things that might be fascinating to readers: Just like Vicki Baum herself, the Ambros family has close ties to the music scene so you’ll get a lot about being a violinist. There are wonderful scenes set in Vienna and there’s a huge set piece that takes place during the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906. There’s stuff about mental illness and there’s a short interlude that takes place in Hawaii. Which is to say: Vicki Baum puts a lot into this novel while still writing a book that predominantly wants to entertain its audience.

I enjoyed the novel throughout. The original English version doesn’t seem to be in print, but used copies are floating around. Other novels by her can be bought, such as the aforementioned Grand Hotel. Since this seems to be her most famous work, it’s probably where I’ll go next. Which is to say, this won’t be my last book by Vicki Baum.

Read if you like:

• edgy female characters
• characters you love to hate
  
• complicated family relationships
  
• historical backdrop ranging from 1900 to roughly 1945