Other People's Clothes

(Paperback)

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'Full of delicious layers . . . I felt drunk reading it.' Emma Jane Unsworth

Intoxicating, compulsive and blackly funny, Other People's Clothes is the thrilling debut novel from Berlin-based American artist Calla Henkel.

2009. Berlin.

Two art students arrive from New York, both desperate for the city to solve their problems.

Zoe is grieving for her high school best friend, murdered months before in her hometown in Florida.

Hailey is rich, obsessed with the exploits of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and wants to be a Warholian legend.

Together they rent a once-magnificent apartment from eccentric crime writer Beatrice Becks. With little to fill their time, they spend their nights twisting through Berlin's club scene and their days hungover.

Soon inexplicable things start happening in the apartment and the two friends suspect they are being watched by Beatrice. Convinced that their landlord is using their lives as inspiration for her next thriller novel, they decide to beat her at her own game. The girls start hosting wild parties in the flat and quickly gain notoriety, with everyone clamouring for an invite to 'Beatrice's.' But ultimately they find themselves unable to control the narrative and it spirals into much darker territory . . .

Reviews

A sparkling debut . . . this is a very good plot-driven thriller dressed in a glittery jumpsuit. There are laugh-out-loud lines throughout. -- Rhiannon Cosslett * Guardian *
Truly original . . . Brutal, glamorous and genuinely unpredictable, it will blow your mind until the very last page. -- Moya Crockett * Stylist *
Fuelled by a creeping sense of unease, this is a wild, energetic gem of a novel that is entirely involving. -- Fanny Blake * Daily Mail *
Thrilling * Cosmopolitan *
Hugely entertaining * New York Times *

Sharply observed and very funny . . . a worthy addition to the growing canon of outsider writing on Berlin . . . Henkel has an exacting eye for subtle situational humour, and she excels at describing the sorts of characters one encounters in the German capital . . . Calla Henkel cleverly manipulates expectations to build tension until the very end.

-- Jessica Loudis * TLS *
The most fun novel I've read this year . . . I kept reading late into the night to find out, enjoying every moment. -- Laura Waddell * The Scotsman *
Darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive. I couldn't stop turning the pages . . .This is a debut you won't want to miss. -- Megan Abbott
Full of delicious layers . . . I felt drunk reading it. -- Emma Jane Unsworth
Other People's Clothes feels like reading a thriller by your most acerbic friend. -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days
A darkly funny crime thriller . . . Henkel draws up a dazzling and vaudevillian image of the artworld, one that feels all too strange and too real at once. * ArtNet *
Gleefully raunchy * Washington Post *
In Henkel's exciting and visceral debut novel, two New York art students spend a year in Berlin, where they get caught up in a swirl of seedy nightclubs and cut-rate booze. Their toxic entanglement is the true star here, but there are plenty of wild revelations to keep a reader turning the pages * New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) *

Author Bio

Calla Henkel is an American writer, playwright, director and artist living in Berlin. She has staged plays at Volksbuhne Berlin, The Whitney Museum of Art, as well as at New Theater, the experimental theatre space she founded and programmed in Berlin from 2013-2015. Her art writing has been published in periodicals such as Texte zur Kunst, Spike, Mousse, and others. Her artistic work with Max Pitegoff has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. She currently operates a bar, performance space and film studio called TV in Berlin. Other People's Clothes is her debut novel.