Berlin

April 15, 2023
In this dark and twisty debut, Setton crafts a clever thriller-cum-expat narrative for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Antoine Wilson's Mouth to Mouth, and Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station. Daphne, a directionless 26-year-old Londoner, lands in Berlin with little plan for her time there. Living off her parents' money, Daphne expects to make friends, find love, and discover her real life, the one she keeps expecting to appear and replace her bleak and circumscribed existence. A strange and violent event one night at her subleased flat leads to her gradual paranoid spiraling and the transformation of the city in her eyes. Berlin devolves from a hipster mecca into a nightmarish hellscape as Daphne struggles to hold on to her tenuous sanity. Setton's sentences are the real draw here. She peppers Daphne's speech with sharp observations about modern life, youth, and the burdens of contemporary womanhood. As Daphne's time in Berlin drags on, marked by her waning body mass and increased running mileage, she encounters many colorful characters, including internet dates, local Berliners, fellow expats, one ex-boyfriend, and a possible stalker. Daphne's unreliability--her tendency to double back, correct the record, and manipulate the reader--creates a sense of disorientation that only enhances the slippery plot. Setton expertly portrays the wily, seductive nature of addictions and dysfunctions, and her novel's humorous voice belies horrors both small and large. While most of the book eschews thriller genre conventions, replacing usual plot beats with rumination and drifting (and the occasional footnote), the novel never lags. Daphne's youthful despair and loneliness are horror stories in and of themselves--ones from which it is hard to look away, especially when coupled with the evocative German setting. Raw thriller meets darkly funny coming-of-age for an enjoyable, unsettling debut.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 27, 2023
Setton debuts with a moving and rollicking tale of self-delusion. Daphne Ferber, 26, a London-raised Oxford graduate from a wealthy French family, settles into a new life as an expat in Berlin. With no need to work, Daphne structures her life around German classes, endless runs through city parks, and late-night eating binges. While her motives for moving to Berlin are initially unclear, her charming narration gradually becomes more obviously unreliable. Daphne, however, only begins to grasp the big picture when a stone is thrown through the window of her sublet, setting off a chain of increasingly wild and threatening events. In addition to crafting a convincing story of a singular young woman, Setton proves herself a masterful and hilarious chronicler of contemporary life. For example, when Daphne begins internet dating, she categorizes the men she meets into seven groups, including “Readers of The Little Prince,” “Conspiracy Theorists,” and “Men with Sisters.” Well-plotted while still capturing the meandering feeling of Daphne’s unbound life, and with deliciously handled foreshadowing, Setton’s sharp novel of stunted plans is compulsively readable and ultimately devastating. This isn’t one to miss.

May 1, 2023
At the center of Setton's debut is Daphne, a listless young woman who tries to escape her problems by moving to Berlin. Daphne is not on a quest to find herself, as that would take too much effort; she has no job, is kept afloat by her parents' money, and is able to explore the city as she pleases. As the novel unfolds, her newfound friendships and romances, though promising at first, are tainted by self-destruction. Daphne turns every interaction into a deceitful performance. Mundane obstacles are made insurmountable in the face of her paranoia, lying, and increasingly severe eating disorder. She cannot decide whether she wants Berlin to be a sparkling new chance or another failure. This tension gets pushed further by some light psychological suspense elements and Setton's anxious, stream-of-consciousness style, which turns everyday life into a landmine. Berlin is well suited for those looking for a darker take on the aimlessness of young adulthood.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.