Hope and fear. There is hardly anything to which we react more suspiciously than to change. Yet Stefan Schliefenbeck actually has got nothing to lose. He just has to talk to her, the pretty cashier in the organic food shop. If it weren't for his hopes and fears: instead of finally plucking up courage, he flees into staggering imaginations of what might happen, and thus repeatedly shifts the plot to his inner self.
Be it a parable about freedom or a homage to the pitfalls of everyday life: "Gesang vor Türen" is a one-man love story that never takes place - original, multi-layered, almost universal.
As in his poetry, Bernd Lüttgerding achieves the almost impossible in his debut novel: an alliance of lightness and depth.