December 2024
The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer
The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer, translated by Milena Adam is not for the faint of heart, I’m afraid, in fact you might want to schedule an appointment afterwards and take yourself on a long walk to contemplate what you just read.
The novel centers on a young German woman who finds herself in a chic London private practice, seeking the services of a Jewish doctor for a highly unconventional request: to provide her with a circumcised “Jewish cock.” "It wasn’t just thinking outside the box, but that I had set the box on fire years ago and refused to look at the lighter in my hand.”, says the unnamed protagonist to Dr. Seligman as she reclines in the examining chair, seeing only the back of his head between her legs, unraveling a torrent of deeply buried secrets. Her confessions are startling: a disturbing obsession with Hitler, a fixation that seeps into her most private fantasies, and an overwhelming sense of revulsion tied to her identity as a woman and a German.
The oft-used metaphor of watching a car crash—impossible to look away from—feels entirely apt here. While the novel’s tone might draw comparisons to authors like Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heti, or Chris Kraus, particularly in its depiction of complex, unlikable female protagonists. It’s no surprise that Kraus herself provided a blurb for the Fitzcarraldo Edition, calling the book: “Surprising, inventive, disturbing, and beautiful – The Appointment is an overdue, radical intervention.” The novel has previously also been compared in its monologue form and patient-doctor relationship to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, though I’d argue it completely defies easy literary parallels. Its audacity and radical perspective take it into uncharted territory such as a sexual Hitler fixation which is intertwined with an unhealthy obsession with Jewish identity, throw in a few perversions and gender dysphoria. If that sounds uncomfortable, it is—and that’s precisely the point.
Did I mention it’s not for the faint of heart?
Born in Germany and living in London, Volckmer originally wrote the book in English, her second language, finding it too difficult to tackle the subject matter in her native tongue. Interestingly the book struggled to find a German publisher, as it was considered as “too heavy” and “not funny” for the market.
For German readers, the monologue is undoubtedly challenging—at best unsettling, at worst appalling and harrowing. But this is by design. Volckmer has stated that she wrote the book to break the German silence, to confront Germany’s terrible past and pretenses about it. She deliberately limited herself to 30,000 words, admitting that writing more would have been “unbearable.”
Although hard to digest, Volckmer knows how to real it back in occasionally and lets her protagonist deliver piercing insights, including:
"Love often reminds me of blood, Dr. Seligman. Don’t you think they are quite similar? Blood is only beautiful and full of symbols as long as it stays in its place, but once we see it smeared across someone’s face or dried on a towel , we are put off because our mind immediately fills in the gaps with violence and a lack of control. Love, like blood, needs a story we can tell. If it breaks free from the picture frames and veins we have forced it into, it causes hysteria, and brutal attempts are made to put it back where it belongs, to contain what is contagious; for, like love, blood gives life, but it is also home to all the things that can kill us, all that we are afraid of, all the diseases that Dracula had instilled in his rats. There is a hygiene of love, don’t you agree?”
In many ways, The Appointment feels like an endurance test. Lines like, “There isn’t always a reason why we feel a certain way. It’s not always linked to some trauma or what other people have done to us, because sometimes we are the agents of our own sadness,” linger long after the book is closed, leaving an indelible impression that is equal parts haunting and thought-provoking.
You will find further information about the book/s and how to borrow them below under Related Links.
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