The Laughing Maus

Ok, to get it out in the open first I want to say that the story David Safier put together in ‘Mieses Karma’ has, to my knowledge, about as much in common with the Buddist concept of Karma as a dog has with a tricycle, even considering that all things are connected. I should also mention before I continue that ’Mieses Karma is written originally in German and to the best of my knowledge has not been translated to English,

“Why then am I reviewing it in English?” you ask.

Because not everything I do makes a whole lot of sense. Even to me.

Kim Lange is a television moderator who desperately wants to win the Deutschen Fernsehpreis (the German Emmy). With the help of both her elbows and some colloquial dead bodies to climb over she’ll get it too. When that grand evening arrives, if you discount the non-appearance of her perfect designer dress and it’s too-tight replacement, which splits wide open as she is accepting the prize, it’s a glowing success. Never mind that it’s her daughter’s birthday; a person doesn’t win the Deutschen Fernsehpreis just every day. Her husband, Alex is at home looking after all that birthday party stuff.

Besides, how often does a girl have the chance at a one-night-stand with the most dashing moderator (her “hottest” competitor) in all of German television?

Oh yes, dream after dream comes true on this magical evening until Kim Lange takes her teensy-tiny, little-itty-bitty but still gnawing guilt trip up to the roof of the hotel, presumably to throw it over the edge and gets hammered by the glowing remains of a bathroom from a Russian spaceship reentering the atmosphere. What a way to die.

Thanks to her goodness and sympathy, her kindness towards all mankind, Kim wakes up afterwards – as an ant. Yes, I knew all this when i bought the book. I thought it had a chance of being amusing or instructive. It’s on the bestseller list – it can’t be that bad.

Oh, yes It can.

I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t find it strange. I found the plot specious: barely surface credible and deceptively mean spirited, as though the concept of research is satisfied when the author reads the first few paragraphs of the wikipedia entry for Karma. Should a breathing audience be expected to buy into the idea that Cassanova is still, after 200 human years being reborn as an ant? How many ant generations would that be? And if so, that he is the only creature of note Kim meets in all her (four or five) rebirths. And he remembers having been a human? Cassanova?

SPOILER

In the end, Kim Lange is finally reborn as a human. Her soul slips into the fat body of an fast-food waitress. Apparently fat fast food waitress’ depict a lower life form if one was once a slender television moderator – who knew? Human again, she is free to get close to, and have an(other?) affair with the very same (hot!) moderator she slept with the night she, as Kim Lange, died. Right? Of course she did.

END SPOILER

If you ever have the opportunity to read ‘Mieses Karma’, dont. Go outside in the fresh air – of the real world. Take off your shoes and walk in the grass. Dance or sing a song. Pet a dog, laugh with your neighbor, call your mother, help a little old lady. I wish I had.

End Note: Wikipedia tells me that David Safir writes scripts for German television series. He has won the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, the Deutschen Fernsehpreis (the German Emmy), and a Hollywood Emmy (for the sitcom “Berlin, Berlin”). At the time of this writing, 471 customer reviews have been written by amazon.de users, giving ‘Mieses Karma’ an average of four of five stars. What do I know?