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lizzillia 's review for:
Marzahn, Mon Amour
by Katja Oskamp
The winner of this year's Dublin Literary Award and wow! I loved it. A short novella with no plot but so much heart. Set in a beauty salon in an area where there are multi-storied plattenbau apartments in the working class area of Marzahn, East Berlin, our narrator is a 45 year-old writer who changed career after the rejection of her latest novella. She retrained as a chiropodist and has now been working in this salon for four years. What follows are vignettes about her clients, her perspective as she kneels before them and holds their feet in her hands. During these sessions when our narrator carefully goes about her business, her clients reveal themselves to her - their lives and loves, their successes and failures - and our narrator treats each person with tenderness. Some vignettes make you laugh, some bring a lump to your throat but as you watch each elderly person sit down upon the 'throne', you find that you too are drawn to them, to their resilience, their loneliness, their fragility, and you want to know more about them. I wanted the book to be double, treble in size so that I could follow these individuals who, as you watch our narrator tend them, get under your skin . A super read and one that, as you turn the final page, makes you realise that you are seeing the humanity and the community behind these huge concrete structures, you are seeing warmth, love and heart.