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107/2020. This is two inadequately pasted together novellas about a dull uninteresting girl at a higher educational institution with which she fails to engage either educationally or socially. Each novella consists of her clinging to the first man to show a sexual interest in her in each setting. She has (offscreen) sex with each man at the first opportunity without apparently having any significant ongoing worries or problems about contraception or potential pregnancy. Her landlady "Frau Werner is strangely laissez-faire about my gentleman visitor." Yes, yes she is! We're told the protagonist is secretly an architectural genius but all she does is read about the subject in magazines, without discussing this with her peers or engaging in class. In the first novella she also joins an uninteresting cult in which she repeatedly tells us she isn't interested. The second novella focuses more on her partying, then ends by apparently libelling Walter Gropius. The only real historical atmosphere is provided by occasional mentions of contemporary politics. The Bauhaus is mostly only engaged with via occasional namedropping. Oh, and at one point the author seems to forget her characters wouldn't have had mobile phones ("call me - urgently") and would have written letters by fast post instead.

I couldn't decide whether the author was genuinely bored by her chosen subject and characters, and was writing this to cash in on the Bauhaus anniversary celebrations, or whether this is one of those regrettable first novels that only gets published because the author has contacts in the industry. Either way I have difficulty understanding how this subject matter could be rendered so dull or why it would be singled out for translation.

The English translation by Lucy Jones includes at least two charming new phrases not found in conventional English. I assume these are accidental errors but I enjoyed them anyway, my favourite being "unchartered territory" although "circumvent the enormous railway station" is also hilarious.

There aren't any other worthwhile quotes from the book so I'll quote my reading notes instead: On page 105 the protagonist finally expresses interest in something she's doing! On page 113 she meets some people she's actually interested in! On page 114 the novella ends. On page 117 a new novella begins in a different setting.

FYI all these women are more interesting than this book....
First woman awarded a degree in architecture in Germany: Jovanka Bončić-Katerinić.
First woman with her own architecture practice in Germany: Emilie Winkelmann.
Designer of the Frankfurt Kitchen: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. ( )

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