I'd never heard of her either, maybe I'd heard the name and paid no attention to it. Massie versus Mirabell. I'm intrigued at Mirabell's response: he doesn't like the book or the author, but he's just borrowed it again from the library. As Mirabell is an arbiter of taste, it is laudable that he is so open-minded as to read it again, if only to prove that she is a middling writer, which he already thinks. What I would like to know from Mirabell (or his other online self) is what is it that makes him vacillate between ignoring the author and re-reading her? Peer pressure? And a few more specifics as to what it is that Mirabell and other German critics dislike would be handy, e.g. bad style ("mediocre prose"), dreary subject matter, the wrong political take on things, the exploitation of Ossie-Wessie status (pace Erpenbeck).