Book review of Why We Took the Car / Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf

Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf
A road-trip YA novel with a difference

I read a lot of YA fiction because it's fun and light and easy to read. Occasionally, I come across a YA novel that's so good, I recommend it to everyone, no matter what age or sex they are and no matter what type of books they usually like to read. Tschick / Why We Took the Car is one of those books.

I read it in German first and, because I knew I loved it and my German isn't as good as my English, I bought a translation of it and read it in English, too.

In terms of genre, I don't really know how to describe it. It's about two 14/15 year old boys and is coming-of-age / Bildungsroman. But it's also about a road trip and I think, the way the scenery and the dreamlike sequences are written, it could also be described as literary fiction. But who cares about genres anyway?

Quick summary of plot: Maik and Tschick, two unpopular boys at school, drive in a stolen Lada through Eastern Germany, meeting many strange and kind and interesting characters along the way, getting themselves deeper and deeper into trouble as they go. 

All to a soundtrack of Richard Clayderman piano music (because that's the only tape they have) and one-liners and put-downs that make the boys (and Isa, the hilariously foul-mouthed girl they meet at a rubbish dump of all places) so realistic as teenagers and so likeable.

Its always hard to pin down what you love about a book, especially when there are so many things. But I do love the friendships between Tschick, Maik and Isa, and of course how confusing those friendships are because Maik loves Isa and Tschick loves Maik (I think) and they all throw insults at each other which, in my world at least, shows how much they all love each other.

When I read this book (twice) I thought it was unfilmable, partly because so much about Maik that you like - his awkwardness, his lack of confidence, his belief that he is boring to the point of invisibility - is internal; also partly because the book is about the scenery and the landscape of their journey and how do you make that into a good film? But I watched the film in 2018 and it was amazing.

It's quite a unique book but I think that if you liked these books, you would like Tschick too:
Almost English - Charlotte Mendelson
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence