In lesbian Ljubljana: Suzana Tratnik and her novel “The Pontoon Bridge”

Jana is a scene star. When she goes to Ljubljana’s lesbian and homosexual golf equipment, the bouncers greet her enthusiastically. Typically they even give her a stamp that provides her free drinks on the bar. She has spent many nights in retailers like Lovci, Monokel and Tiffany, all of that are positioned on the positioning of the previous Metelkova barracks within the northeast of the Slovenian capital.

Through the day, Jana’s life is much less glamorous: within the first scene of Suzana Tratnik’s novel “The Pontoon Bridge” the 33-year-old predominant character is in the midst of a panic assault. She caught Jana on the best way to the submit workplace, however she slowly calmed down and was capable of proceed on her manner. On the submit workplace, nonetheless, the worker refused her forwarding request as a result of the deal with on Jana’s ID card differs from the forwarding deal with.

Lover with drug drawback

Transferring is a part of Jana’s unsettled on a regular basis life. She is so many semesters and exams behind in her research that it’s unclear whether or not she is going to even be capable to graduate. She earns her cash by translating and writing small texts for a girls’s journal, though she desires of writing her personal columns.

Suzana Tratnik tells the story, which takes place within the Nineties, in small ellipses and flashbacks, by means of which we find out about Jana’s greatest problem in her life: her relationship with Simi, a mannequin with an immense drug drawback. Jana smokes weed and drinks lots herself, however Simi additionally takes heroin. An important distinction that pulls the 2 right into a poisonous vortex. Jana as soon as describes him as a gap on the planet. “Worry, nervousness and revenge, that acquainted combine. She was afraid that Simi was already at house, however she was much more afraid of the hole horror of the empty house.”

Suzana Tratnik, born in 1963, gave her protagonist her personal 12 months of delivery, and identical to Jana, there have been many drug addicts round her within the Nineties. “I noticed that the majority addicts have extreme childhood trauma and the medication are a sort of painkiller,” she wrote in an electronic mail. “I made a decision that I didn’t want something like that and that crucial factor for me was creativity.”

Tratnik got here to Ljubljana within the early Nineteen Eighties to review and have become concerned within the lesbian and homosexual motion. In 1997, she made her debut with the quick story assortment “The Backside Line,” and since then she has revealed six extra quick story collections and 6 novels and is among the most well-known queer voices within the former Yugoslavia.

Humor and fast dialogues

The homosexual membership Tiffany and the lesbian Monocle have been additionally as soon as necessary locations for Tratnik. Within the monocle – the e book cowl and a few pictures inside present what it regarded like there – Tratnik was liable for the cultural program within the early to mid-noughties, and in 2007 she started writing “Ponton Bridge”. Nevertheless, sooner or later she obtained caught and left the textual content behind and wrote different books. However she by no means stopped serious about the novel and at last began engaged on it once more in 2019. “I had a whole lot of enjoyable writing. “Which means I used to be already properly immersed within the textual content and I had sufficient distance,” she says.

In “The Pontoon Bridge” Tratnik zooms in extraordinarily near her characters and their scene. Other than a psychologist who Jana goes to repeatedly, there may be nearly no outdoors world; all of the characters belong to the lesbian or drug scene. Not even gays play a task, and AIDS shouldn’t be talked about, although the e book is about on the peak of the epidemic. Even Jana and Simi’s households are solely sketched with a number of traces. This attitude signifies that while you learn it, you’re feeling like you might be sitting on Jana’s shoulder and even in her head, which on some days she needs to poke her eyes out of.

Jana’s relationship with Simi has the traits of codependency, that means her psychological scenario is affected by her accomplice’s habit. An expertise that Suzana Tratnik additionally had on the time and later started to categorise along with a psychologist. Studying Freud, particularly “Demise and Melancholy,” was additionally useful. “That is how I managed to beat this time of unfavorable emotions, fears and uncertainty,” she says in the present day.

The time period “pontoon bridge” comes from one among her remedy periods and can also be talked about within the e book throughout the dialog with the therapist. How Jana manages to construct a bridge-like auxiliary construction over her fears and abysses is gripping to learn. And because of Tratnik’s expertise for fast, usually humorous dialogues, they’re additionally very entertaining.

By the best way, the monocle remains to be round in the present day. Nevertheless, issues have modified lots, says Suzana Tratnik. However she doesn’t exit that always anymore anyway.