Murder and Celebrity in the Early Aughts: Five Questions for Calla Henkel, Author of Other People’s Clothes — Our February Discover Pick
Hardcover $28.00
Other People's Clothes: A Novel
Other People's Clothes: A Novel
By Calla Henkel
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
Two American students abroad find themselves at the center of murder and celebrity. Other People’s Clothes brilliantly stages a cat and mouse game between a well-known thriller novelist and two art students, one that explores the intensity of female friendships, millennial life and identity. We got the opportunity to ask Calla Henkel five questions on everything from the inspiration behind her novel, constructing our own narratives, to what she’s reading and recommending right now.
Two American students abroad find themselves at the center of murder and celebrity. Other People’s Clothes brilliantly stages a cat and mouse game between a well-known thriller novelist and two art students, one that explores the intensity of female friendships, millennial life and identity. We got the opportunity to ask Calla Henkel five questions on everything from the inspiration behind her novel, constructing our own narratives, to what she’s reading and recommending right now.
Art school, murder, Amanda Knox. This propulsive debut hits readers hard and fast as Zoe and Hailey try to take control of how their story is told — and who gets to tell it — against the glittering backdrop of Berlin’s art scene. Where did this story start for you? What was the spark?
In many ways Other People’s Clothes follows a timeline similar to my own; I went on exchange in 2008 to Berlin as an art student. And shortly after arriving to the city, my best friend and I sublet an apartment from a famous writer. We, of course, were not being watched and no one ended up dead, but we were obsessed with Amanda Knox and the strange tabloid tornado that had engulfed her. Years later, the intensity of that time period returned to me, and I began to gut the truth and fill it with pulp.
Grief and guilt really blind Zoe. Did you ever fear for her safety as you were writing her story?
Throughout the whole book, Zoe is stumbling on the edge, so yes, there were moments when I was scared that she would trip. But I think her ending, and what she discovers in those final moments of the book provide the rope that will eventually save her from free-fall.
Zoe is a collage artist, using everything from scent to fashion to build a persona. We’re all a bit Zoe in that regard. How do we often let the world around us piece together our identity?
I was very interested harnessing the strange power of borrowing that took place when I was a teenager in the messy clothes littered bedrooms of my friends, back when I was certain a new swipe of eye-liner could profoundly alter my reality. Zoe is stuck in this looping process, trying things on; hair color, politics, art practices, clothing and emotions, believing that each new version will provide salvation. And I truly believe there is nothing wrong with this type of borrowing as long as you eventually find yourself in the pieces. But in Berlin we discover Zoe is spinning-out, lost in a galaxy of fragments.
Throughout the novel, Zoe is dealing with the consequences of others telling her story until she discovers A Room of One’s Own and is fueled by Virginia Woolf’s anger about the obstacles women face in telling their own stories. Can you talk about how we construct the narratives that build our lives?
We live in a time that demands a near endless amount of self-narrativizing, and social media is an obvious force in this process. Other People’s Clothes is set in the late aughts, right before the explosion of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etcetera, when the power still belonged to blogs and magazines. It was a moment when women were being brutalized by the media via paparazzi, Britney had already melted down, and Lindsay Lohan was on her second or third mugshot. I think Hailey was extremely aware of the incoming power shift in personal story telling, and through her insistence of photographing their parties, and her eventual written version of the girl’s narrative, Hailey was trying to wrest control from all the powers that surrounded her. I think that fundamentally, as humans, we all deeply desire to be heroes and our species survival depends on that recognition.
We love to ask: what are you reading and recommending right now?
Right now, I am reading Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman, and Elvia Wilks new book Death by Landscape which comes out this July and is fabulous. And I am constantly telling people to read Musa Okunga’s beautiful book set in Berlin, In