Tag: German literature

Decoding a Language, Part Two: An Interview with Andrea Scrima about Her New Novel “Like Lips, Like Skins”

Posted on by Andrea Scrima

by Andrea Scrima

In her second novel Like Lips, Like Skins (German edition: Kreisläufe, Literaturverlag Droschl, 2021) Andrea Scrima unpacks a family story of strong emotional ties. When the first-person narrator Felice finds her deceased father’s diaries, she combs them for clues to a past riddled with blind spots. She abandons a drawing series because she’s afraid she’s no longer able to tell the difference between reality and abstraction; years later she wonders if she studied art to make good on her father’s unfulfilled childhood ambition. In Like Lips, Like Skins, Scrima transplants her own works of art into fictional settings. Artistic perception permeates everyday life and speaks a formal language that, much like the first-person narrator’s recurring dreams and the symptoms of her trauma, lends itself to interpretation.

Part One of this interview was published December 20, 2021 on Three Quarks Daily.
For Part Two, which focuses on the function and presence of art in Like Lips, Like Skins, Ally Klein corresponded with the author over the course of several weeks via email; the following is an edited version of a talk the two gave on December 11, 2021 at Lettrétage in Berlin. Read more »

“Insanity is never trusted”: A conversation between Andrea Scrima and Ally Klein

Posted on by Andrea Scrima

by Andrea Scrima

Ally Klein was born in 1984 and studied philosophy and literature; she lives and works in Berlin. Carter (Literaturverlag Droschl, Graz, Austria, August 2018) is her first book.

Ally Klein. Photo: Pezhman Zahed

The novel’s plot is easily summarized. Carter, the main character of the eponymous novel, is dead. When the narrator hears the news, he or she—the sex is never clear—is caught by surprise. The book opens with an introductory recapitulation of events, but reveals very little in the way of biographical information about the person telling the story. When the story proper begins, the narrating self wanders ghostlike through the streets of an unknown city until, one night, it runs into Carter—a striking figure bursting with so much life energy that she immediately pulls the narrating self into her orbit. Fascinated, this self tries to court Carter; the ensuing relationship wavers between intimacy and distance, the respective degree of which always lies in Carter’s hands. In the end, everything ends in catastrophe, while the narrating self gradually appears to lose its sanity and its grasp on reality.

Andrea Scrima: In one sense, Carter reads like a fever dream; when the narrating self moves to a small city divided by a river, its mind is already beginning to break down. Whether or not Carter might be a product of the self’s imagination or a projection of a part of the self is something the book leaves open. Without focusing too much on interpretation, my question is: does the novel allow for this read?

Ally Klein: Yes, among all the other possible interpretations, you can also see Carter as a product of the imagination. The question is where this imagination begins, and how far it carries. As the book opens, the reader learns that Carter had been suffering from a heart condition that, in the end, proved fatal. The narrating self, which came close to getting a degree in medicine, is shocked by the news; somehow, it managed to ignore all the telltale signs.

Perhaps the self doesn’t want to face the obvious; when they meet the first time, it sees nothing but vitality in Carter. It interprets the sound she makes inhaling a cigarette as a potent life force, whereas for Carter, breathing presents a real struggle. This is where the so-called imagination begins. Carter’s entire identity is filtered through the perception of the narrating self. Read more »