This podcast explores the struggles of women in contemporary literature. Here students of the University of Siegen discuss toxic attachments, false securities, and the modern online world they find in American fiction.
The Appeal of Passivity: Katie Kitamura’s A Separation (2017)
In today’s episode, Anna-Lena Schmidt, Jonathan Möck, and Vanessa Wohlfeil try to come to terms with Katie Kitamura’s 2017 novel A Separation. We talk about tourism, class conflicts, and unreliable narration.
In A Separation, we follow a female translator to Greece where she is to find her husband from whom she is attempting to get a divorce. This plot about a failed marriage turns into a mystery thriller, as the husband turns up dead in rural Greece, the predominant setting of the novel. But rather than being a clichéd crime novel, what follows is a mediation marriage, infidelity, loss, and mourning.
Kitamura’s third novel received enthusiastic blurbs from fellow writers, such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Kushner, Jenny Offill, and Rivka Galchen. Her writing echoes the talents of Han Kang, Hiroko Oyamada, and Claire Messud. Her latest novel, Intimacies, was featured on a list of book recommendations by Barack Obama for the summer of 2021.music & sounds by: Axl Rhodes, listen to "Netrunner" in full!
find the LITHUB article here: https://lithub.com/katie-kitamura-on-subverting-tropes-in-a-separation/
30 Dec 2022
The Girlfriend Experiment: Catherine Lacey’s The Answers (2017)
In today's episode, Tim Albers, Johanna Manz, and Marcel Hartwig discuss Catherine Lacey's sophomore novel The Answers (2017). The novel introduces us to Mary Parsons whose real name is Junia Stone. She has chronic physical pains and takes up a special holistic treatment that adds tremendously to the already existing financial burden of her life. In order to cope with her rising debts she responds to an ad and is hired as “Emotional Girlfriend” in a Girlfriend Experiment. The purpose of the latter is to decipher the neurobiological mysteries of a successful love relationship. In this experiment, the work of the relationship is split up, every woman hired for a different emotional performance is reduced to a role and love’s work becomes a scripted set of data. Our conversation about The Answers explores the narrative form and the themes of Lacey's book. Together we ponder the merits of the novel’s Girlfriend Experiment.
music & sounds by: Axl Rhodes, listen to "Netrunner" in full!
8 Dec 2022
Existentialist Body Horror: Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2015)
In today’s episode, Tabea Herman, Vanessa Wohlfeil, and Marcel Hartwig discuss Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine.
3 Dec 2022
Indifferent Intimacy: Lynne Tillman’s First Novella
Episode 1 features a discussion of Lynne Tillman’s Weird Fucks between Charlotte Kirchner, Jonathan Möck, and Michelle Bach, together with the host Dr. Marcel Hartwig.
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