Bea Setton

I was ruining my life a little every day, and although I see now that these things were redeemable, I've always found starting on a clean page more inviting than amending an imperfect first attempt.

Daphne arrives in Berlin with no real goal outside of learning a little German. She's sure in a new place she'll make friends and create a life for herself that she really likes, where she is a better version of herself. But of course things proceed differently. For one thing, she's lonely in this new place where she doesn't know anyone and has no prospects for friendship outside of her German class or dating apps. For another, she has very little to occupy her time. She runs a lot, focuses to a frightening degree on her food issues and finds herself menaced, both by a stalker and by someone who throws a rock through her apartment window. She wasn't coping well before things became dangerous and she doesn't do well under duress.

Bea Setton's novel is set in one of my favorite places and begins like that kind of novel I enjoy in which a woman makes mistakes and either learns and grows or really embraces her tendency toward disaster. But Setton's doing something else here, giving a portrait of a young woman who is seriously unwell and far from anyone in a position to help her. People do try, but in the way of acquaintances, eager to not be too pulled into her life. As the novel progresses, small contradictions creep in, then more obvious ones; Daphne is not just presenting her side of the story, she's also lying in her internal monologue and there's are jarring discrepancies not only between how she sees herself and how others do, but between how she sees herself from one moment to another. I admire how well Setton managed to make this all work, even as it made me more and more uncomfortable being in the mind of a mentally ill woman who was not receiving the help she needed.… (mehr)

Daphne, an Oxford graduate with no job, no occupational prospects, and wealthy parents, moves to Berlin, ostensibly to study German, although she tells people she is in a graduate program for philosophy. However, her emotional troubles travel with her, disrupting the life she hoped to build in a new country.

After having just read two very intensely wrenching novels, I was ready for something different. This was not it! This one was also intense. Some have called it witty or darkly funny. Perhaps it is my background as a mental health professional and I look at it differently from a lot of readers, but I did not find humor. Yet, it provided good insight into the pathology of mental disturbance. Tormented with doubt, self loathing, self delusion and an eating disorder, the new life she so wanted spins out of control. Yes, while some of her difficulties may be the result of the treatment of women in society, at their base is her emotional instability.

This is a debut novel and it is well written. This was an engrossing, short read, with some insight into the psyche of a disturbed young woman as well as the obstacles women often have to face in today’s society. There may be a fine line between what one must do to adapt in a misogynist world and pathology, but Daphne, I feel, has crossed that line and is in need of help.

Thanks to #netgallely and #penquinbooks for the ARC.… (mehr)