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. ( )