This is the story of a ring, and I don’t mean only the physical jewel Edvard gave, as a love token, to his boyfriend Bernhard, it’s also the metaphysical cycle of time, started many years ago and that has to find a closure now, in the present.

When Edvard gives Bernhard a ring, he was not expecting for it to be the ending of their relationship, but that is what apparently happened. Bernhard literally runs away from Edvard, and disappears without any explanation. What Edvard doesn’t know is that, right when he put the ring on Bernhard’s finger, he opened a portal on a past that is not yet forgotten, not until the only survivor will still remember a boy from the past. Once I heard a legend about the fact that dead people cannot rest until the last one on heart remembering them will not die; only then they will be able to move to the alterlife.

Bernhard is physically ill, the ring was like an arrow to his heart, and he is experimenting emotions that are true to him, but that he doesn’t understand. The impeding feeling is that his relationship with Edvard is at risk, and that something tragic will soon happen. Someone near him will die, but Bernhard knows that is not the tragedy he is waiting to struck, actually it seems like this death is closing the circle. Nevertheless, Bernhard is forced apart from Edvard, and various misunderstanding will make really difficult for them to mend the path bringing them together again. Maybe only the ring will be able to.

The novel is no light romance at all, but it’s intense and bittersweet. In a way, all lovers involved will have their happily ever after, some of them in the near future, some of them will wait for a life. It was not an easy read, it had always like a dark cloak wrapping it, at the same time warming but also obscuring the light, that light that was escaping the lovers who came into contact with the ring. Had the cycle to be broken, before Bernhard and Edvard could be happy? Or instead had it to be completed? The ring of lovers is at the same time happiness and tragedy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/3867874441/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

Zu sagen, dass sein erster Roman auch gleich der Beste ist, wäre sicherlich verfehlt, aber der Pessimismus der späteren Romane fehlt hier zum Glück. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Umwelt und vor allem der Familie sind hier überzeugend und nachvollziehbar dargestellt. ( )