Magdalena Sünderin

Magdalena Sünderin

1995 • 351 pages

Ratings1

Average rating4

15

A strawberry blonde beauty in a leather suit kidnaps a priest, takes him away in her sidecar motorcycle, ties him to a tree on a secluded meadow and over the course of a few days proceeds to tell him her life story which includes the confession of the seven murders of her seven ex-lovers. Oh, and she's called Magdalena. While the murders teeter from justified to revenge-fueled, we - and the priest - learn to love Magdalena. She's escaping suffocation - by family, provinciality, Austria - and rides her motorcycle all across Europe on the search for adventure and connection. While her relationships start out fulfilling, they all quickly take a turn, with her lovers exhibiting different shortcomings that are variations of men's expectation for women to be domestic and demure.

Not as pulp as that description might make it appear, but rather a covertly mischievous tale, occasionally wordy yet never boring, with very entertaining biting takedowns of Catholicism and the patriarchy.

Hard not to visualize Magdalena as Marianne Faithfull in The Girl on a Motorcycle.

January 28, 2023Report this review