Wizyta

by Katharina Volckmer, Agnieszka Walulik (Translator)

Akcja powieści rozgrywa się w gabinecie milczącego doktora Seligmana, który wysłuchuje monologu swego pacjenta. Poruszane tematy to między innymi nieufność wobec lekarzy, seksroboty, złamane serce, wyrzuty sumienia Niemców żyjących po Holokauście – czytelnik zaś ma wrażenie, że siedzi tuż obok, na kozetce. Czy na pewno narrator zwierza się psychoanalitykowi? Lekarz żydowskiego pochodzenia słucha erotycznych fantazji o Hitlerze i wspomnień o dziadku, który zostawił „skromną sumkę”, a dorobił się jej, pracując jako zawiadowca stacji kolejowej znajdującej się niedaleko Auschwitz.

W połowie książki poznajemy intymny sekret, choć czytelnik już wcześniej dostaje wiele wskazówek co do celu tej wizyty. Powrót do tematu, od którego rozpoczęła się ta opowieść – nazistów – podkreśla smutną prawdę, jak trudno jest spełnić największe marzenie: mieć czystą przeszłość. Równie ważnym motywem tej powieści okazuje się milczenie. Niełatwe zmagania z tym, co było, problemy tożsamości, wiary, zbrodni i kary podane w niezwykle przekonującej formie monologu przeplatanego zabawnymi, ironicznymi, czasem surrealistycznymi komentarzami, nie pozwalają czytelnikowi oderwać się od lektury.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, LGBT, Germany, Queer, Literary Fiction, German Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2020

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 21/2: Anna informed me in the comment section that the novel was published in Germany last year with good reviews. As a result, part of my review is no longer relevant.

Longlisted for The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses
Book 1/10

I have been thinking how to tell you about the writing of this novel and I finally decided to let you read the first few phrases because you will get a fairly good idea of what to expect right from the start:

“I know that this might not be the best moment to bring this up, Dr Seligman but it just came to my mind that I once dreamt that I was Hitler. (…) I really was him, overlooking a mass of fanatical followers; I delivered a speech from a balcony. Wearing the uniform with the funny, puffy legs, I could feel the little moustache on my upper lip, and my right hand was flying through the air as I mesmerized everyone with my voice. I don’t know what I was talking about – I think it has something to do with Mussolini and some absurd dream of expansion – but that doesn’t matter What is fascism anyway but ideology for its own sake; it carries no message, and in the end the Italians beat us to it.”

The small novel (96 pages) is written as a conversation/confession between the female narrator and a certain a Jewish doctor while he performs a medical intervention on her. The nature of the operation is important to the story and it will be gradually revealed to the reader. The conversation is really a monologue but we are made to understand that the doctor replies from time to time, although his interventions are not included. The narrator takes the opportunity to release all her frustrations and confess her feelings towards Germany, Nazism, sexuality, women vs men, Japanese sex toys and many uncomfortable subjects. She talks about her strange fascination with Jews, her eccentric sexual behavior and violence. The writing is obsessive, offensive, darkly humorous and compulsively readable.

According to her, the honest and stingy monologue about Germany’s past made her novel unpublishable in Germany. Here is what she said in an interview when she was asked whether a German publisher picked up the book:

"German publishers have been quite scandalized by it and have refused so far to publish it. They think it’s too radical. That to me just proves the whole book, the problem the book presents, that you just can’t have these conversations."

Here is another example of the author’s choke on your food humor, which I totally enjoyed:
About Dr. Seligman: "You are a member of a heavily persecuted minority, so I am sure you have lots of children; they are your form of rebellion. I get that, it must have been a triumph for you to get your wife pregnant and think of all the people who tried not to make this possible. So in a way, you are like me and think of Hitler when you orgasm. I'm joking".

A book that isn’t for everyone but some will definitely enjoy it. Apparently, fans of Ottessa Moshfegh might find this one right up their alley.

This novel is published by the wonderful English small Press Fitzcarraldo. The Appointment is the 4th book I read from their catalogue this year and I have two more coming up since I decided to subscribe. They have all been outstanding and Hurricane Season was until recently my favorite book of the year. In case you were wondering, Milkman will most likely top the chart but I still have a bit to read from it.

An interesting article about Fitzcarraldo:
https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/fit...

[Ilse · Rating 2 out of 5]

No shock, no awe…

Our veins are slowly filling with each other’ stories and dirt, each other’s colours and screams; we carry each other’s broken hearts under our skin until one day they block everything and stop the flow of our own blood, and everything bursts in one final moment of despair.

If I was to give awards to books, The appointment would win the award for disappointment of the year 2020 (ex aequo with Bastien Vivès graphic novel A Sister). I am aware I am in the minority on this one, unimpressed by it. What did I think? Honestly, though the novel is probably meant as thought-provoking, not much. Call me squeamish or whatever you like, but this monologue from a German woman in a Jewish doctor’s cabinet (the nature of which I cannot reveal without spoiling) mostly fell on deaf ears with me. Superior ranting? Acerbic wit in the same vein of Thomas Bernard? Barely. Its intended dark humour, scarcely enticing a grin, felt mostly wasted on me. It had its moments though, like this self-deprecating joke on dry German bread as a punishment from God for all the sins the Germans committed:

You know that horrible bread we eat and tell everyone about, like some sort of self-perpetuating myth? I think it’s a punishment from God for all the crimes we have committed, and forthwith nothing as sensual as a baguette or as most as the blue-berry muffins they serve here will ever come out of that country. It’s one of the reasons I had to leave: I no longer wanted to be complicit in the bread lie.




(Just to say I laugh easily).

Re-reading some isolated sentences which I noted down when reading the monologue two months ago, this time looking them up in English, the intelligence, bitterness and despair permeating the narrative voice struck me – the hardly suppressed anger, astutely exposed in the barbed juxtaposition of personal and historical pain. What a deeply sad, depressing story on sexual, national and bodily shame and self-hate this is:

And I think that in a way that’s all we are: other people’s stories. There is no way we can ever be ourselves. I tried for so many years to be something they call genuine, but now I know that I am not one thing but the product of all the voices I have heard and all the colours I have seen, and that everything we do causes suffering somewhere else.

Despite its multitude of themes and some superb turns of phrase, the pointless ranting, dull page after dull page, made this a struggle to get through, however brief it is. The Nazi and Hitler jokes, the hackneyed observations on the female body and the silliness of society’s androcentric mores rather provoked yawning than shock . Admittedly, it is constrictive and ridiculous to teach girls it is indecent to sit with one’s legs apart while this is perfectly acceptable for men (Volckmer definitely has a way with words: Ban the weapon and not the wound), but at a certain moment growing up means one has to stop blaming one’s (grand)parents and embrace one’s freedom.

If the author’s intention was to shock and disconcert, it maybe was a good move to pitch the book as too scandalous for German publishers, so outré it might provoke a storm. I can only shrug as I cannot envisage it causing much more than a ripple, a storm in a glass of water – though isn’t such belief in the power of literature anyhow touching? (yes, the cynicism of this book is infectious as hell).

All the same one might as well experience this novel as amazingly original and thought-provoking, a brilliant parallel as it is called to Philip Roth’s Portnoy's Complaint – or perhaps we are the privileged witnesses of the birth of a female Thomas Bernard? It just wasn’t for me, simple soul, not needing another reminder of the rotten fruits of the human mind and history – let alone one that left me indifferent.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Appointment is a companion piece, of sorts, to Portnoy's Complaint. You know, Philip Roth's monologue in which Alex Portnoy yaks on about jerking off in the bathroom while his mother screams at him from the other side of the door. Katharina Volckmer has written the female, German equivalent, if you will. As much as Alex Portnoy feels Jewish shame, Volckmer's protagonist suffers from German self loathing. And this self loathing has spread to encompass her sexual identity.

I was lured into this read by the tantalizing siren call of "for readers of Ottessa Moshfegh...". I have to admit, it gets me, every single time. I can see why the comparison is made in this case - this is clever and subversive writing. Volckmer's funny, she's cynical, she's brash. I mean, look:

God, of course, was a man too. A father who could see everything, from whom you couldn't even hide in the toilet, and who was always angry. He probably had a penis the size of a cigarette.

Look here, too:

I know that we need illusions, but sometimes I think that we shouldn't be so scared of the truth. And I don't mean the truth about how most olive oil is fake or one in three beards contains traces of faeces - those facts aren't fun, and it's probably best to keep lying to ourselves about them and the damage we do to ourselves and others.

Ew. Beards.

The whole soliloquy takes place at a doctor's office. Our female narrator spills the beans about every possible crass thought that has ever gone through her head, whether it's sexual fantasies involving Hitler, or how she's never understood why women have been taught to close their legs when they sit down, or the strange relationship she had with married artist, "K", who painted her body purple time and again. Also, about how she never felt at home in her body.

I was most intrigued by her thoughts on Germany's history, and how it must be like for today's Germans to live with their past, always lurking in the shadows.

I was never really able to fully grasp what we have done, Dr. Seligman, what it means to wipe out an entire civilization, but I always felt that I had grown up in a ghostly country in which there were more dead than living, where we lived in cities that had been built around the remnants of where our cities used to be, and every day felt like walking on something that wasn't supposed to be there.

Apparently this book has not yet found a German publisher, which is perhaps quite telling about the way Germany wants to deal with a history that is far from faded from people's minds. **edit: A German publisher released an edition August 11, 2021**

The link between German identity and sexual identity and the loathing that takes place with both entered a bit of a murky area for me. I was a little bit confused by the near-militant feminist perspective here that is juxtaposed with the narrator's ultimate rejection of her female body.

While some of it is engaging and entertaining, some of it felt like it was trying hard to shock. Like the author took a shit on the page just to get a reaction. I guess Ottessa Moshfegh has been accused of the same thing. But Moshfegh's novels have a narrative, a story for you to travel through, rather being caught in a wind tunnel.

The thing with monologues is that by their nature they are solipsistic. There's only so much of that I can take. I kept wishing, for the love of god, that the doctor would have a line of dialogue, or a nurse would pop her head in the door, something, so I could get momentary relief from the hamster wheel that is the narrator's head. If anyone talks too long without interruption, it eventually turns into whiny, teenage blather.

I'm interested in what Volckmer writes next, without a doubt. I'm just hoping next time at least two people will get the chance to speak.

[Meike · Rating 1 out of 5]

English: The Appointment
Okay, this is hilarious: The author, who is half-German and who has lived in London since age 19, so half of her life, has promoted this book in the English-speaking world by declaring that it hasn't been published in Germany because, you know: "They say it’s too radical, it’s vulgar … They just felt deeply uncomfortable. I think they were worried that it would be a scandal.” This, ladies in gentleman, is outright ridiculous. Now that there is a German translation, you will soon find out that almost no one in the German speaking world will care about the book, and not because it is so edgy (it's not), but because it is bad, a mere pandering into German stereotypes that sell in the English-speaking world: Those Germans, they don't want to hear about the Holocaust, and they have no sense of humor either, I've always known it, thanks for validating my point, Karen! The only shocking thing about this novella is that the marketing has the nerve to compare it to Thomas Bernhard and Ingeborg Bachmann. And for the record: There are also some reviews in German papers, and absolutely no one is scandalized, so thanks for playing, Katharina Volckmer (but as she is German, she probably knew this beforehand, she just figured that stating such things would help her push copies).

A German woman goes to a Jewish psychiatrist (or isn't he?) and rambles about her sexual fantasies with Hitler, and her adultery, and her great-grandfather working at a train station near a concentration camp, how daring! *irony off* Apart from the fact that obviously, that train worker would by all mathematical probability have been her grandfather, so a man she ate Christmas dinners with (now THAT would be a reality that this generation faces!), this edgelord nonsense is certainly not a meditation on German identity, but just a text that fits well into some people comfortable preconceptions. And as there are still many issues to tackle regarding Germany's past, how about tackling them, instead of writing about how horny some thirtysomething woman gets when seeing Hitler's mustache? What's the point of that, besides the obvious attention grabbing by sexualizing a genocide? It's silly and tedious.

And here's a list of books that have been nominated for the German Book Prize 2021 that deal with intergenerational trauma and guilt connected to the holocaust:
- Mitgift
- Der versperrte Weg: Roman des Bruders
- Vati (now shortlisted)
- Eurotrash (now shortlisted)
- Besichtigung eines Unglücks

Just read any of these books that have been nominted for the most widely recognized literary prize in the country and that...ääähhh...apparently underline that the Holocaust is not a topic at all anymore. There is still a lot of work to do, and we have to fight the far-right and uphold our values, but Volckmer's book ain't it, it cynically capitalizes on a monstruous crime - you just can't convince me that these metaphors (I just say: Jewish cock) are remotely clever.

And regarding what Volckmer says about "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", check out Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil - although there's a possibility that the audience who gobbles this one up isn't interested in research conducted by Jewish-American scholar Susan Neiman.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel(a) proves that it’s possible to combine some of the darkness and ‘nastiness’ from Otessa Moshfegh’s Eileen with the humorous parts of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and the stream of consciousness delivered within Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport. If you’d like you can also add just a hint of sexual excitement from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian to spice it up a bit more.

By mixing all the right ingredients, using the right measurements, you can (surprisingly?) create something fresh and original like Katharina Volckmer’s The Appointment.

96 pages, my friends, if you’d believe it, and still, this “little thing” shouted louder and kicked harder than most 400 page novels I’ve ever read (yes, Shuggie Bain, I’m looking at you!).

Good writing (tick).
Dark (tick).
Intelligent (tick).
Wild (tick).
Sometimes nasty. Oops! (tick).
Sexy? Ahem... Well... Right... (tick).
Thought provoking (tick).

And funny (tick, tick, tick!).

Contemporary and relevant.

5 stars, obviously.
It didn’t feel like an appointment at all.
It was liberating and freeing.
Like life should be.
All the time.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

The Appointment is the latest novel from perhaps the UK's finest publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions, as well as the latest book from the Republic of Consciousness book club.

It is, commendably, just 88 pages long, but packs a much more powerful punch that many tomes 10 times the length. As the author of Fitzcarraldo's previous, also relatively short, novel noted: "The cosmopolitan mindset of Fitzcarraldo, with the chief editor being saturated in French culture, brings with it an openness to a book length that is unconventional in British terms, though perfectly standard in France and elsewhere.”

The novel is told as a first person monologue (technically a dialogue with occassional, off-page, interjections from her interlocutor) from the narrator to a doctor during a medical appointment - the appointment's nature becomes clearer as the book progresses.

The narrator is a young German woman, living in London, and her stream of thoughts include Japanese sex robots, the hypoallergenic nature of squirrel meat, men's fascination with the genetalia of their dogs, and on a more personal note, her troubled relationship with her mother, her own conflicted gender identity and her affair with a married man, K., who paints on her torso (shades of The Vegetarian). She also confesses to the she teased the therapist, which perhaps casts doubt on some of what she tells her doctor here.

Her nationality also gives rise to guilt given her doctor, Dr Seligman, is Jewish. On the very first pages, she admits to (or claims to have) sexual fantasies involving Hitler and later on, in one of the novel's many moments of dark, and close to the knuckle, humour she remarks:

You are a member of a heavily persecuted minority, so I am sure you have lots of children; they are your form of rebellion. I get that, it must have been a triumph for you to get your wife pregnant and think of all the people who tried not to make this possible. So in a way, you are like me and think of Hitler when you orgasm. I'm joking.

In an interview in Publishers Weekly the author remarked of this humour, "German publishers have been quite scandalized by it and have refused so far to publish it".

In later becomes clearer that she has chosen Dr Seligman deliberately for his nationality, as it is key to the transformation she is asking him to perform on her.

The publisher Jacques Testard commented in inews that this novel "occupies similar territory to Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, with maybe a hint of Houellebecquian nihilism” and to me the influence of Malina seemed particularly strong (my review)

Overall, not a novel for everyone, but certainly one I appreciated.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult to briefly encapsulate, this often felt like Bernhard at his hilarious, pitch-dark best. Not for the squeamish or those easily offended, The Appointment is very funny and deeply sad, a glittering black jewel. It's on the one hand a ribald critique of convention, and what's considered permissible (and how repression can turn our only means of transgression - what we think - down some very dark cathartic lines of necessarily provocative inquiry), and an angry treatise on what still impedes and propels transformation and how the last frontier of self-actualisation - our bodies - is still so painfully politicised. (The reasons are clear enough -- control is largely run along gender lines and fuelled by the manipulation of traditional cultural values, which requires reinforcement via easily-demonised 'troubled' marginal figures. Yet here, it's never actually clear how much of the transformation is about self-loathing and the need to shed an unwanted, poisoned persona vs. a means of nascent evolution and fulfillment of self.)

The book features one woman's brief monologue, and it serves as a painfully acute exploration of the emptiness of much of what is deemed aspirational and acceptable. It also seems to suggest that most people have no idea who they really are, since they allow themselves to become some form of designation imposed by outside forces and inculcation. And for all the suffering the protagonist endures, the broader message seems clearly to be: far better the defiant search -- successful or not -- for some kind of personal authenticity over the self-annihilating crumbs offered for mindlessly following the herd.



'But don’t you think having someone’s portrait on your desk like that is a little possessive? Isn’t adoring someone, especially a woman, like burying them alive in your own version of things? I always felt like men were not capable of loving women for what they actually are, and so they turned them into little cakes, or rather gâteaux—you know, those scary-looking things we call torte in German. Something that’s nicely decorated and capable of keeping you alive for many days if necessary, something that could feed a family but not something you would ever buy in a shop if it wasn’t perfect. And at some point they started calling this oppression love; I mean, I get it, nobody likes ugly people, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to label this a positive emotion as opposed to something that we should all be working on, like mindfulness and plastic straws. Just look at women in their wedding photos and then think of the horrible German torte with its layers and layers of buttercream, originally designed to help pensioners die more quickly, and all those men in suits smiling at yet another woman who fell for all this crap and let herself be turned into a pretty little thing, scared of moving in case some of her decoration will fall off, or that someone notices she wasn’t born like this. That there is a face underneath this face and a heart beating underneath all those layers of white fabric, there to remind everyone of some seemingly long-forgotten tyranny of innocence and the generations of women that came before, who signed over their freedom for getting one day in their lives when they could honestly believe that they were the most fuckable thing in the room and that this was about them and not about conquering their spirits.'

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

And I think that in a way that’s all we are: other people’s stories. There is no way we can ever be ourselves, I tried for so many years to be something they call genuine, but now I know that I am not one thing but the product of all the voices I have heard and all the colours I have seen, and that everything we do causes suffering somewhere else.

Mesmo quando faço uma resenha altamente negativa de um livro, nunca penso que estou a ofender algum leitor, porque não é essa a minha intenção e por isso digo sempre “são só livros”. Contudo, durante a leitura de “The Appointment”, achei que seria mais fácil detestá-lo e criticá-lo do que elogiá-lo, porque receio ofender alguém ao louvar um monólogo em que a autora, uma alemã de 35 anos, começa por pôr a sua protagonista a confessar as suas fantasias sexuais com Hitler a um médico judeu, o Dr. Seligman, que passa a dita consulta com a cabeça enfiada entre as suas pernas, em silêncio. Se é ginecologista, se há ali algo de cariz sexual, só se saberá quase no fim, a menos que se tenha o mesmo azar que eu, o de ouvir uma pessoa que contou demasiado. Ainda assim, este livro vale pela ousadia, pelo humor negro, pela ausência de filtros e pelas questões que levanta, como, por exemplo, a aniquilação da mulher na religião...

No religion I have ever come across had anything nice to say about women. (...) And they talk of penis envy, but look at the lengths people have gone to to cripple and defeat vaginas, to tell women that pleasure is not for them, that there is such a thing as being good. I mean, how many women have covered pages and pages of books about cocks and the way men are supposed to dress and think and dream?

...que dá lugar a uma reflexão sobre vaginas e pénis, um dos temas centrais desta obra.

I never understood why there were two different ways of sitting for people with and without cocks. (...) I always found all of that terribly confusing and often thought that maybe the cocks should be hidden instead, that we should ban the weapon and not the wound.

Se há limites para o humor, Katharina Volckmer ultrapassa-os todos, por isso, escolhi passagens que me parecem menos ofensivas, apesar de todo o sarcasmo. Como alemã, debate-se com a permanência do fantasma do Holocausto na vida dos alemães.

And in our music classes we had to sing ‘Hava Nagila’ in Hebrew, Dr Seligman – thirty German children and not a single Jew in sight, and we sang in Hebrew to make sure that we remained de-Nazified and full of respect. (...)Who wants to be remembered as the receiving end of violence? We are so used to being in control of our victims, and that’s why even after all these years I cannot quite suppress my amazement that you are alive outside our history books and memorial sites.

Entre outros pontos, estou em sintonia com esta escritora no que toca à banalização de certos símbolos da Segunda Guerra Mundial com fins comerciais. No meu caso, enojam-me os títulos que exploram o termo Auschwitz; no dela, é o aproveitamento do nome do próprio Führer como técnica de marketing.

How else would they have resisted a film with the title Hitler’s Beekeepers when they have already used up most of the possible Hitler-and titles? Personally, I am still waiting for 'Hitler’s Nail Clippers' and 'The True Story behind Hitler’s Haircut'.

Nesta consulta, a protagonista poderia também estar num psicanalista pela forma despudorada como revela as suas perversões sexuais, como abre a alma sobre a sua família...

I cut ties with most of my family years ago, and even if that means that I will die alone in a piss-ridden care home where carers will gag me with their dirty underwear, it also means that I managed to break free from the worst kind of conversation there is on this planet, that between family members, and in particular between aunts. It’s like sticking a hoover into your brain and pressing reverse, except that there is no mercy: your head won’t simply explode, which would be a blessing.

...e, sobretudo, como expõe a difícil relação que tem com o seu corpo e o das outras mulheres.

You know when you look back at your life and suddenly can’t pretend anymore that you didn’t know something? In some ways, I have always known that I was a barking cat.

[Alfredo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se "Fleabag" fosse um livro, seria esse.

"A consulta" é o monólogo de uma paciente na sala de cirurgia de um médico. Alemã, ela devaneia sobre seus desejos sexuais bizarros, fetiches, identidade nacional, relacionamentos, desejos e os efeitos do naz1smo na sociedade. É uma leitura rápida, divertida, sagaz e que me prendeu do início ao fim.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize.

My five start review of this would be as follows.

This short novella (only 85 pages) nevertheless packs in a whole host of themes: German post-war liberal identity; love – not as something that is given but as something that is egotistically imposed by its giver on its object; transgenderism – in particular looking at the way in which the world seeks to impose a clear and fundamental binary divide on something which for some people is fluid; sexbots and what they say about the fundamentals behind sex; the body and how attitudes to it change between age and sex; art and religion and their interaction with identity and the body; the role and downsides of therapy.

And all of it written in a style that is a very deliberate rewriting of two giants of literature (one American and one European), with it being both:

A deliberate rewrite of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” – some items being simply tributes (Roth’s controversial liver is replaced by - – at least from reviews I have seen – an equally divisive banana), in some cases a literary sleight-of-hand (the reader takes time to realise that Dr Seligman in this novel is not a psychoanalyst) and some simply reversals (of sex, religion etc).

And a book explicitly inspired by the writing of Thomas Bernhard but which in this case makes far more sense than the rather dismal trail of authors who have simply taken from Bernhard that they just have to write a mix of misanthropy and scatology and pretend it’s literature. Here I think the author is very much in Bernhard’s “Nestbeschmutzer” tradition , albeit here rather cleverly attacking a German society that considers itself to have fully acknowledged its Nazi past and to be both liberal and hyper-tolerant rather than (as Bernhard) a traditional/conservative Austrian one in denial about its Nazi past.

It is also one that is genuinely funny – even from the first page “It was never feasible for us to hold down an empire for a thousand years with our deplorable cuisine”

My one star review of this would be as follows.

A book which is subtitled “The Story of A Cock”, whose contribution to the controversial issue of transgender rights and toilets is too banal to even list here, with a protagonist who pretends to interact with Hitler and with a mix of crude and scatalogical humour, and culminating in the alleged eating of popular and furry members of the rodent family – the book is basically a rewrite of Freddie Starr. Mercifully it is short (as I think was Freddie Starr).

So on average 3 stars.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

This… this… this. This book is nuts. I can definitely tell you that this book won't be for everyone. You'll figure that out right away, probably by the first sentence even. Dreams and fantasies about Hitler, graphic talks about sex and anatomy, unconventional observations about the Holocaust, etc. This is gutsy stuff. Yet, the book doesn't feel like it's just here for shock value (although it sure is a jawdropper). There's a really sad and disturbing and quite insightful character study about gender and sexuality at play here. And once you slowly start to discover why the protagonist is seeing a doctor, the novel becomes even more fascinating. The author makes several keen observations that cut like a knife, and I've made note of them. I read this in less that 24 hours. It's quite short. Geez...what a debut.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021

My eighth book from the Republic of Consciousness list is another that is very difficult to assess objectively. The book is a monologue told by a woman to a Dr Seligman, who at first appears to be a psychotherapist but is actually the plastic surgeon in charge of her gender change surgery. The monologue is raw, open and often deliberately shocking right from the start, in which she describes the role of Hitler and the Nazis in her sexual fantasies. There is also an element of Bernhard in the nihilism and the torrent of consciousness, and quite a lot of black humour.

So this is another book that is easier to admire than to love, but probably just about merits four stars because it is undoubtedly well written, memorable and striking.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confessional narratives such as tell-all magazine articles and dramatic reveals on talk shows frequently dominate the media. I could easily imagine the narrator of Katharina Volckmer's debut novel “The Appointment” inhabiting a similar scandal-hungry space as by the second page she admits she's sexually drawn to Hitler and muses “don't you think that there is something kinky about genocide?” But this book isn't simply trying to be sensational, exploitative or shocking. This is an unfiltered monologue from the perspective of a young woman who is a German expat grappling with unsavoury compulsions that consume her. She discusses her tumultuous relationship with a married man and how she lost her job after threatening a coworker. Over the course of the book she speaks to a mysterious individual named Dr Seligman who she's arranged to meet in a London examination room because she believes “the only true comfort we can find in life is to be free from our own lies.” The true nature of their appointment remains elusive, but over the course of their session she reveals her innermost desires and thoughts. In doing so we come to understand her ambiguous feelings about her family and relationships as well as her own national and gender identity. Through her unsparing honesty we're given a fresh perspective about the many instabilities which are at the centre of being.

Read my full review of The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer on LonesomeReader

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Randevu nereye koyacağımı bilemediğim, garip bir kitap. Genç bir Alman kadın, cinsiyet değiştirme ameliyatı olduğu doktoruna içini döküyor. Bu iç dökme sırasında Nazilerden, soykırımdan, ailesinden, cinsel arzularından hem ruhuna hem de bedenine dair mahrem detaylardan bahsediyor. Bunu yaparken kendini hiç sansürlemeden olduğu gibi anlatıyor. Arada ilginç şeyler söylüyor gibi olsa da hiçbiri beni öyle aman aman etkilemedi. Bunun sebebi de yazarın bile isteye bir provokasyon içerisinde olduğunu düşünmem. Çoğu anlatılanı bu yüzden çok zorlama buldum. Bir Alman olarak Hitler’i anlamaya çalıştığını ima eden cümleler kurmak, soykırımdan dem vururken bunu bir cinsel (ve ulusal) kimlik bağlamına oturtmaya çalışmak bana tribüne oynamak, daha doğrusu kolaya kaçmak gibi geliyor. Hele bir de Thomas Bernhardvari bir üslupla yazıyorsanız öfkenizin de ironinizin de fazlasıyla “gerçek” olması lazım çünkü en ufacık bir yapaylığı kaldırmıyor o üslup. Burada hissettiğim tam da buydu. Hiç ama hiç sevmedim ama yazarın sonraki adımda ne yazacağını da merak ediyorum.

[Denisa Ballová · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mala som za sebou tri kávy a objednala som si štvrtú. Bolela ma hlava, noc pred tým som spala asi štyri hodiny. S Katharinou sme si sadli k malému stolu v rohu miestnosti, ešte na chvíľu som zachytila židovskú melódiu, ktorá sa ozývala Rómerovým domom, a potom som sa už sústredila len na svoje otázky a jej odpovede. A kým som bola zo začiatku strašne unavená, ku koncu nášho rozhovoru som sa prichytila, ako sa nahlas smejem, ako ma Katharina nakazila svojou náladou aj pohľadom na svet.

Počas prípravy som si prešla jej rozhovor pre Guardian aj Paris Review a moje otázky mi pripadali strašne obyčajné. Ukázalo sa ale, že neboli. Že sme sa venovali tomu, čo v týchto rozhovoroch nezaznelo, že sme riešili Nemecko, jeho historické dedičstvo, sexualitu, mindráky mladých, samotu, ktorú všetci prežívame, reakcie čitateľov na jej knihu.

„Pre čitateľa či čitateľku bude kniha šokujúca podľa toho, čo už majú za sebou. Ich reakcia na knihu rovnako veľa vypovie o nich samotných. Ľudia na moju knihu reagujú dosť odlišne. Ja však veci, ktoré riešim vo svojej knihe, nepovažujem za šokujúce, hoci niektorí tak moje myšlienky môže vnímať,“ povedala mi počas nášho rozhovoru a ja som vedela, že má pravdu. Zdvihnuté obočie som totiž mala už na prvej strane jej knihy Jewich Cock, ktorú som prečítala asi za dve hodiny. Má výbornú dynamiku, hoci je v podstate len monológom rozprávačky, ktorá príde na terapiu. Rieši tam smrť, úzkosti, vlastné telo, túžbu. A napokon tiež Nemecko, kde jej knihu najskôr odmietali vydať. Ako to napokon dopadlo vysvetlila v našom rozhovore. Dozviete sa v ňom napríklad aj to, ako jej prvotinu prijala jej rodina. A ešte viac vám odporúčam knihu Kathariny Volckmer. Možno vám totiž niečo prezradí aj o vás samotných.

„Trvalo mi dlho, kým som pochopila svoje vlastné túžby (…), kým som si uvedomila, že ich nikdy nenaplním.“

Rozhovoru tu - https://dennikn.sk/3099787/skuma-sexu...

[Alessandra Gennaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parafrasando il giudizio che Mick Jagger diede su Madonna (una goccia di talento in un mare di ambizione), qualche battuta di genio, in un oceano di noia.

[☆LaurA☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non è per un cazzo semplice dire qualcosa su questo libro.
Si affrontano temi importanti, apparentemente slegati tra loro, ma più si ascolta la storia della nostra narratrice, più tutto ci appare più chiaro.
Dall'identità di genere all'olocauso, dalla masturbazione all'amore fedifrago, dalle paure alla riconciliazione con i propri genitori.
Io un CAZZO Ebreo l'ho letto senza spere cosa aspettarmi esattamente e ci sono rimasta di cacca quando faticavo a staccarmi dalle parole, quando sentivo che volevo sapere cosa pensava questa donna che amava un uomo, ma si sentiva un uomo. Quando lei e le sue perversioni prendevano il sopravvento, quando la sua sensazione di essere sbagliata collimava con la mia, perché sentirsi sbagliati non vuol dire solo essere in un corpo sbagliato. Ci sono milioni di modi per sentirsi inadeguati a questa vita e cercare conforto, supporto e empatia a volte è più semplice davanti ad un estraneo.
Parlare liberamente come fa la nostra protagonista con il suo chirurgo plastico, parlare con qualcuno a cui della nostra storia non importa un cazzo.
Ogni cosa che facciamo è causa di sofferenza per qualcun altro e qualche volta siamo noi stessi la causa della nostra tristezza.

-Quando la vita non sembra altro che una raccolta di istanti in cui hai perso il controllo, nient’altro che una fila di punti ciechi nella tua dignità, e tutto quello che puoi farci è scoparti un ammasso di materiale non riciclabile dotato di una voce artificiale.
-Ci saranno sempre giorni in cui tutte le tue cicatrici si risveglieranno, e tu sentirai ancora parole e risate che pare ti seguano ovunque. E rivivrai tutti quei vecchi dolori e quelle vecchie ferite, il tessuto compresso e il sangue che non è più il tuo
-L’amore mi ricorda spesso il sangue, dottor Seligman. Non pensa che siano piuttosto simili? Il sangue è bellissimo e altamente simbolico solo fino a quando resta al suo posto, ma, una volta che ha sporcato la faccia di qualcuno o si è seccato su un asciugamano, ci disgusta perché la nostra mente pensa immediatamente alla violenza e a una mancanza di controllo

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the wake of Ducks, Newburyport comes another superb monologue written by a woman railing against the treatment of women in society.
However the contrast with Lucy Ellman's book couldn't be greater. Ducks, Newburyport is long (1000 pages), digressive and written from the point of view of a homemaker, wife and mother.
The Appointment is short (90 pages) and much punchier. The narrator very much a non-comformist.
Both books are excellent by the way.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

not perfect but perfect.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Therapy cannot fix some of you bitchesssss 😭😭

Listening to this while being /in/ Germany was kind of trippy

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kako skuvati „Pregled” Katarine Folkmer?

Prodinstati Rotov „Portnojev sindrom” i začiniti ga sa malo Ziskinda, malo Šlinka, još manje Bernharda i trunčicu Elfride Jelinek i Hilde Hilst. Kada se sokovi lepo ukrčaju, krknuti dobar komad zaleđenog Tomasovog „Belog hotela”. Mešati dok se ne otopi. Čim se dobije ujednačena smesa ubaciti provokativni paketić aktuelnih femministički-eko-seksualno-psiho-rodno-ispovednih tema i sve flambirati Polom Presijadom, Patrišom Makormak i Bjornom  Rasmusenom. Poslužiti na ledenom tanjiru iz Ikee i, radi ugođaja, pustiti album „Shaking the Habitual” od The Knife. Kao prilog dodati hobotnicu, voćni jogurt i prženi tofu. Ili nešto sasvim vegansko.

Pohvala za odličan prevod Igora Solunca!

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although for the most part I enjoyed, if that's the right word, the cleverness of the author, I oftentimes felt that much of it was shock for shock's sake, and the ending, tying Germany's national shame to our protagonist's conflict regarding her own body, seemed a bit inevitable. A few times, some clunky passages led me to the cover page, since I kept thinking it must be a faulty translation - only to discover it WAS originally written in English. All in all though, well worth the brief time it takes to wander though its pages, and I have a feeling I'll think back on it and ponder its mysteries for at least the next few days.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read anything else quite like The Appointment. It's a stream-of-consciousness narrative, the words of a German woman in her thirties, addressed to her doctor as she undergoes a medical appointment. The nature of the appointment is initially obscure – for reasons that become very clear by the story's end. The fact that the narrator is German is important: her sense of self is closely tied to her nationality and, along with sex and gender, it's one of the main things she discusses. (She jokes about having told a therapist she has a 'Hitler fetish', yet she can't seem to stop talking about Hitler, or Jews.) The mood shifts from page to page; our narrator is often funny and endlessly quotable. Seemingly designed to be read in one sitting (it's just 96 pages long), The Appointment is a bold black comedy, uniquely entertaining.

I received an advance review copy of The Appointment from the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

What you say to your doctor while he/she has their head between your legs during a gynaecological procedure (which procedure is hinted at rather than fully explained).

Well 'what you say' is stretching it a bit, it would be more apt to say what you think if you are in a particular frame of mind which does happen of course.

Lots of topics, views, one liners begging for examination. The thing is that for me this constant stream of one sided conversation got to be a little on the self centered side and I kind of switched off. Thinking about why this happens, it's because I think that when authors insert not just one character and their thoughts but other people talking or any kind of interaction outside the main character, then that lets me in, leaves me able to participate, feel a connection. This was like sitting down with someone and it's all them from start to finish, it's all them and you feel like you are just a sounding board for them to spout off rather than an active part of the conversation and you get bored and roll your eyes and can't wait to be able to bugger of.

[Patrycja Krotowska · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

"(...) jedyna prawdziwa pociecha, jakiej możemy zaznać w życiu, to wolność od własnych kłamstw".

Jest coś hipnotyzującego w narracjach wyznaniowych. A jeśli narracje te są świetnie napisane (i przetłumaczone) - to mamy książkę na raz. Tak uważam, że powinno się czytać "Wizytę" - przy jednym posiedzeniu. Bo jest to książka-koncept, książka-doświadczenie, po którą najlepiej sięgać bez żadnego rozeznania w temacie, a już najlepiej bez zaglądania do zbyt dużo ujawniających recenzji. Wtedy mamy przed sobą wieczór z wybornym eksperymentem literackim. Więc ja co nieco bezspojlerowo napiszę, ale jeśli planujecie lekturę - zostawcie wszystkie wizytowe posty i po prostu czytajcie. :)

"Wizyta" to niefiltrowany, błyskotliwy, zręczny monolog, który na 120 stronach oscyluje głównie wokół tematyki niemieckiej emigracji, niemieckiej powojennej tożsamości narodowej, o niestałościach świata, o binarnych konceptach, jakie narzuca na człowieka świat, o stosunku do ciała z uwzględnieniem wieku i płci, psychoterapii i jej zaletach i ograniczeniach, religii i jej stosunku do kobiet, dorastaniu i burzliwych związkach, niezgodzie na panujący ład.

No, i jest ta żądza skandalu i kontrowersji, która mnie niespecjalnie podjudziła i miejscami zdawała mi się aż nadto podkreślona. Jest "Wizyta" trochę przepakowana kontrowersją, która chyba już tak nie szarpie morali w tym przejaskrawieniu (ten Hitler, no...). Ode mnie 3.5/5 - co oznacza, że jestem na tak (debiut! tak napisany i przemyślany! genialne fragmenty!), ale szczególnej bliskości nie poczułam.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have heard about this book, you have probably heard that it is kind of an upside-down version of PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT. There is the long monologue, there are the shocking sexual fantasies, there is even a theme of the frustrations caused by a mother's expectations. But even as it seems to start here it twists those themes and moves towards something else entirely. It starts right off with one of its central themes: the way post-WWII Germany has created a sanitized and empty performance of atonement for its crimes against Jews, but because it is that kind of book, it is not just going to do it simply. It is going to do it in a shocking and perverse way that I will not outline here but that you can easily find with a little googling. But let's just say that if the thought of that theme being pushed to an outlandish and sexualized degree is troubling for you, you should proceed with extreme caution.

The other major theme of the book ends up being not sexual frustration, though it starts out that way, but gender dysphoria. All our narrator's sexual issues stem from a discomfort with their female body and a phallic obsession. I have been asking myself the question of whether this is a trans narrative and I cannot figure out if it is or even what that means at the moment. The writer identifies as a cis woman. As much as our narrator initially understands their frustrations to be based around gender performance and expectations, much of it ends up tied in specifically to genitals. (The American subtitle, I am told, makes this clear, but the subtitle wasn't included in the audiobook so I didn't even know about it until I was nearly finished!) Certainly it appears to be a trans narrative on its face and it uses the concept of gender affirmation surgery among other things as a way to frame the story. And yet... it does feel more like a device here than it does in stories by trans writers focusing on their experience. This is not a book that really wants to imagine the trans experience, and if this book had been written twenty years ago I would find it extremely problematic. Where we are now... well, while we still have a significant shortage of trans writers sharing trans stories, the trans-ing of narratives is something that hopefully becomes more of an accepted norm. I am reminded of Daniel Lavery's book, SOMETHING THAT MAY SHOCK AND DISCREDIT YOU, and the way he imposes trans narratives on classic stories. It would be very interesting to hear more trans readers and reviewers cover this book, or engaging it through a queer theory lens. Unfortunately almost all of the writing I can find about this book focuses almost entirely on the German/Jewish theme, which is important but is ultimately the lesser of the two as far as the book is concerned. It is certainly a book that wants to poke and prod you, that wants you to ask questions, that wants to make you uncomfortable, but I find myself really walking a tightrope in trying to figure out whether the trans elements here are getting that fine line between exploitation and exploration. I have so many questions for the author, too, the word "trans" is never used here and I'm very curious of why, it's one of the reasons I'm not sure we can actually call it a trans narrative. There is no talk of pronouns or hormone therapy, and in a way the trans-ness of it is a kind of "reveal." (I have not used pronouns for the narrator here because I honestly do not know what they would be, though so much of the copy around the book calls the narrator a "woman," which also makes me wonder. Again. So many questions.)

I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, in a quiet tone with a German accent (one of the joys of it is hearing her say "Dr. Seligman" so many times). Audio works extremely well for this title, since it is itself a monologue. Though the author doesn't bring the breadth of tone and pitch professional readers do, I very much enjoyed the lulling sound of it, it felt more natural and less performative. It also fits to have a kind of flat reading of such extreme subject matter, and of course, it feels more German that way.

I do not read many books that try to push your buttons anymore. Sometimes it feels like we have no buttons left to push. Often there ends up being little substance behind the gimmick. But clearly I found a lot to roll around in my brain with this one.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But anyway, I think that our bodies know things long before our minds, Dr Seligman; they will have all the words written on them long before our tongues can find them and our teeth can pull them apart in the empty space between our gums. And in some cases, words can take years to follow our bodies, to say what has already been said."

I was ready to dismiss this small novel—just 88 pages—at first but I was soon vigorously swept up by its heady narrative. It's one of the wildest books I have ever read. Termed too scandalous to come out in Germany at first, it opens as the narrator confesses she has dreamed of herself as Hitler. She goes on relating (fictional?) sexual fantasies involving the Nazis. Subtitled "The Story of a Cock", it's written as a monologue by an AFAB person being examined before gender affirmation surgery and while Dr. Seligman—he is Jewish—is quite naturally presumed to be a psychoanalyst it is steadily revealed otherwise.

Over the course of the book the narrator looks at unequal gender norms and expectations of "people with cocks and people without cocks"; her fear of growing into her mother's body that she perceives with disgust; her ongoing affair with a family man; Japanese sex robots made for male pleasure; her gender identity, her body, the absence/presence of desired genitalia; her guilt as a German woman with a troubled past and Germany's (dis)avowal of its history. Since she admitted to lying before, none of what she tells Dr. Seligman can be taken at face value. It is a disturbing and provocative novel.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This debut novella was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize – a mark of experimental style that would often scare me off, so I’m glad I gave it a try anyway. It’s an extended monologue given by a young German woman during her consultation with a Dr Seligman in London. As she unburdens herself about her childhood, her relationships, and her gender dysphoria, you initially assume Seligman is her Freudian therapist, but Volckmer has a delicious trick up her sleeve. A glance at the titles and covers of foreign editions, or even the subtitle of this Fitzcarraldo Editions paperback, would give the game away, so I recommend reading as little as possible about the book before opening it up. The narrator has some awfully peculiar opinions, especially in relation to Nazism (the good doctor being a Jew), but the deeper we get into her past the more we see where her determination to change her life comes from. This was outrageous and hilarious in equal measure, and great fun to read. I’d love to see someone turn it into a one-act play.

A favourite passage:

But then we are most passionate when we worship the things that don’t exist, like race, or money, or God, or, quite simply, our fathers. God, of course, was a man too. A father who could see everything, from whom you couldn’t even hide in the toilet, and who was always angry. He probably had a penis the size of a cigarette.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Hulyacln · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Babanızla hiç açık açık konuştunuz mu Doktor Seligman? Ben benimkiyle hiç konuşmadım, çünkü apaçık yaşanacak bir hayal kırıklığındansa, hiçbir zaman anlamayacağı bir hikaye anlatmaktansa sessizliğin yeğ olduğuna inandım.’
.
Doktor Seligman dinliyor ve kadın konuşuyor. En gizli arzularını-ailesini-geçmişini ve şüphelerini döküyor bir bir. Başından geçmiş ilişkileri de deşiyor, başından geçmesi muhtemel olayları da. Hitler’i anlatıyor bir de, uzun uzun..
The Guardian’da Elle Hunt şöyle diyor Randevu için : ‘Ulusal kimlik ile cinsel kimliğin düğümü kara mizahla çözülüyor’
Ulusal ve cinsel kimliğin hem kesiştiği hem farklılaştığı noktaları vurguluyor yazar.
.
Thomas Bernhard ve Philip Roth’dan etkilenen yazar Katharina Volckmer, 19 yaşında Almanya’dan İngiltere’ye taşınıyor ve bu ilk eserini de ikinci dilinde - İngilizce- yazıyor. Ülkesi Almanya’nın hala geçmişte-soykırım günlerinde- donup kalması ve geçmişte bunda sorumluluğu olan/olmayan herkesin içinde taşıdığı utancı anlatıyor.
Hem sevdim hem sevmedim Randevu’yu.
Evet cümleler fazlasıyla çıplaktı (bilhassa aile ile ilgili olanlar) , dürüsttü.
Dilindeki cüret ise bazı noktalarda bana fazla ve gereksiz gelse de başka bir eseri dilimize kazandırıldığında yeniden okuyacağım bir yazar oluyor Katharina Volckmer~
.
Melek Memiş çevirisi, Hamdi Akçay kapak tasarımıyla ~

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes. Fuck, yes. If you like Virginia Woolf and/or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, you will love this. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

“Why had I not just spread my legs at the right moment, taken better care of my body, and married one of the men with the dark magnolia trees in their front garden? I could have been one of those women in fancy cafés with not a single thing to worry about. It would have been like living in a chocolate shop, Dr. Seligman. I think that’s why rich people always look like someone just fucked them with a bespoke strap-on whilst someone else ironed their fresh bedsheets in the room next door.”

After a few pages in, the excerpt above pulled me in completely. But that that had influenced me to give this book a 5-star rating was all that came after that.

If I didn’t have a video call thing in a bit (like most people in this pandemic-stricken *makes vague arm gestures* whatever you prefer to call it), I’ll probably write a painfully long(er) review of this marvellous book, but I do; but I do also think that not knowing much about the book (like I how I was when I read it) makes the experience so much. The narrator has a strange sense of humour that I adore – both comically dark, and darkly comical – in a Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) kind of way. The writing is brilliant; I’m still glowing from swimming in that glorious literary honey.

“Why couldn’t I accept that some women derive happiness from their vaginas and their femininity? Why did I always have to think of it as a weakness? And so, I followed my Catholic roots and tried to repent. Prior to that I had only associated being on my knees with a comfortable position for masturbation, but suddenly I wanted to learn to accept what life had in store for me and that I too could be like Helen.”

The style this book was written in felt very like Woolf’s ‘stream of consciousness’ kind of writing. There’s only one narrator in the book, and she’s speaking to only one other person (or so we’re told) – Dr. Seligman. But often it feels like she’s speaking to the readers (which is one reason why this reminded me of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s work; and (surely) the other reason being the whole ‘fucking God’/ ‘wanting to fuck God’ aesthetic/idea).

“I do wonder how much my little bit of freedom is really worth and whether there was no way I could have pulled myself together, made peace with my breasts, and made generations of children hate music and literature. I never had a brain for science. But there was no way I would have lasted, for if you decide to live such a life, you really have to live it, and if people get wind of the fact that you like to suck off strangers in public toilets, they will not trust you with their children anymore. And they will come after you with their pitchforks once they realise that it was their husband you had between your lips. As a woman I would have had to get married to not be a source of danger, and that was always out of the question for me. I have never dreamt that dream, Dr. Seligman, not even as a girl.”

I want so terribly a play adaptation of this book. This book, in my opinion, is meant for the theatre, it’s meant for the stage. I wish someone would make that happen. It would be absolutely, fucking brilliant (not saying that the book isn’t already brilliant). I thought that I’d get bored/sick of the constant use of the word, ‘fuck’ in the book, but on the contrary – I was blown away by how Volckmer owned the word ‘fuck’. Volckmer used the word ‘fuck’ so creatively, so effectively, and so precisely like no writer I’ve read has ever done; and it was done so consistently well throughout the entire book.

“I never understood how God, who couldn’t give birth, is supposed to be the source of all life—how a man could be our creator. Unless, of course, it was what we would call arschgeburt in German, something that your ass gave birth to. Maybe that’s what this world is, Dr. Seligman: something that came out of a holy man’s ass, the leftovers of broken stars and an imploding universe.”

And I will end my review with this quote here because I think it’s more fun to get into this book without knowing much about it. But if you can’t stand the excerpt above then this probably isn’t the book for you. But, I, absolutely enjoyed this book.