Before the several dozen people filling the attic of the Pogor Museum, the Monika Peetz spoke at the “Logos” Club meetings, about the roles in which we can find women in Germany, starting from the five characters of her book, The Tuesday Ladies.
Photo credit: Cătălin Hopulele
At the meeting that was also supposed to involve the writer Mircea Diaconu, Monika Peetz talked to the audience about how she got into novel-writing after writing film scripts and theatre plays. “For 10 or 15 years I only did movies,” she confessed, explaining afterwards that her novels talk about the evolution of five very good friends, who find fulfilment in very different ways from one another. The moderator, Serinella Zara, presented the volume to those in the audience and focused on the five characters. “Fifteen years ago, after graduating from a French language course, the five ladies decided to have a drink at Le Jardin and, ever since, they have been meeting on the first Tuesday of each month. They have their reserved table, always the same, next to the fireplace, and everyone calls them «the Tuesday ladies». It is a novel about friendship and five destinies, about what you thought you knew and, above all, about how wrong you actually were.”
In her first novel, at the age of 11, she made all the characters die
At the beginning of the debate, the writer told those in attendance that she decided to write her first novel at the age of 11. If was about “midlife crisis” and all her characters died by the middle of the book.
Talking about the names of the characters in The Tuesday Ladies, the author admitted she had changed them several times before finding the best formula. “I tried to find names that were common in the years they were supposed to have been used in,” said Monica Peetz, explaining that in German there are names that skip generations, names that today could be borne only by children of around 12 and by people over 80.
One of the most interesting characters in the book, Eva, is a mother whose life is ruled by the number 4: she is 40 years old, has four children and she goes through a crisis. The author pointed out that Eva is not the slave of her family – as one of the readers present at the meeting assumed –, but instead she has chosen to do this in order to look after her children and ended up losing her identity. “The woman is not a slave, this is how she assumer her role. The fact that she does not earn money herself is a form of dependence, but that does not make her a slave. Of course, this is what it’s like these days: if you’re only interested in staying at home with the kids, you’ll have a legitimacy issue. In fact, the new woman must do it all: profession as well as family, as well as being sexy,” the writer added.
Cătălin Hopulele