Other People's Clothes

September 1, 2021

Studying in Berlin to escape painful memories of her best friend's murder, art student Zoe Beech befriends another U.S. exchange student, starry-eyed Hailey Mader, and together they obsess over the notorious Amanda Knox trial while happily subletting a prewar apartment from famed thriller writer Beatrice Becks. Soon, though, Zoe suspects that Beatrice is watching them, intent on using their lives as fodder for her next book. From Berlin-based playwright/artist Henkel.

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December 1, 2021
En route to her study-abroad semester in Berlin, Zoe Beech links up with Hailey, a fellow art student whose style is more Paris Hilton than Patti Smith. Initially, it's a friendship of convenience--Hailey speaks German and has plenty of money--but the women grow closer when they sublet an apartment owned by thriller author Beatrice Becks. Zoe has a history of obsessive friendships with other women, and soon the duo is bonding over a shared fascination with the Amanda Knox case and hosting exclusive themed parties at their sublet. Then they discover a hidden room in the apartment and become convinced that Becks is spying on them. They decide to put on a show for her, and soon their hard-partying lives are spinning out of control. Henkel's debut is a propulsive portrait of obsession and paranoia, set against the backdrop of late-aughts Berlin. Pop-culture references abound, none of the characters can be trusted, and twists and turns are both abundant and shocking. Readers who appreciate stories about the dark side of women's friendships, such as Social Creature (2018) by Tara Isabella Burton, will devour Zoe's tricky tale.

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December 6, 2021
Henkel’s engrossing debut stages a cat and mouse game between a novelist and two art students in which art bleeds (literally and profusely) into life and vice versa. In 2008, NYU art student Zoe travels to Berlin for a year abroad in search of European “dignity and reason” after her friend, Ivy, is murdered. She will find neither. Zoe’s Berlin roommate and classmate is Hailey, a conceptual artist obsessed with Law and Order SVU and Amanda Knox (that “sexed-up Joan of Arc”), and bent on achieving Warholian fame. They rent the apartment of bestselling pulp novelist Beatrice Becks. With Berlin’s “hedonistic wells still running deep,” Zoe and Hailey embrace the drug-fueled spectacle, meeting pretentious art world habitués, Habsburg descendants, and louche seducers who deliver lines like “I collect experiences and handblown glass, but my dad bought Richter early.” Soon Zoey and Hailey suspect Beatrice is reading their diaries and emails for plot material, and Hailey, petrified of them being “immortalized as losers,” conspires with Zoe to gin up drama. But as Beatrice’s interventions intensify and Hailey seeks to exploit Ivy’s tragic death for fame, Hailey and Zoe’s friendship and lives are jeopardized. The antics grow increasingly outlandish, but Henkel shines with her wry, well-observed portrait of the artist. In the end, this offers an intelligent dissection of the insatiable appetite for dead girl stories.

February 1, 2022

DEBUT Zoe, an NYU art student in the throes of grief after the murder of her best friend Ivy, opts for a year abroad in 2008 to study in Berlin. She and her new roommate, mildly obsessive Hailey, move into an oddly furnished apartment owned by potboiler novelist Beatrice Beck. It is not long before they come to believe Beatrice is spying on them in an effort to come up with material for her next novel. In response, they decide to perform their own story. Designing flamboyant parties that rival Cabaret, heavy drug use, sexual experimentation, and other hedonistic pursuits make them almost famous. Then they discover the hidden door. Zoe and Hailey aspire to create art, but instead spin out of control. Hailey is fascinated with Ivy's murder and the trial of Amanda Knox. Zoe questions her sexuality. The plot slowly builds to a crescendo touching on matters of friendship, art, celebrities, drugs and sexuality, and ultimately murder--all set against the backdrop of Berlin's wild nightlife. VERDICT Henkel, an American playwright, director, and artist living in Berlin, provides a peek into the city's art world and its communities of expats. Her multilayered debut is capably written.--Gloria Drake

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Starred review from December 15, 2021
Two women escape the mundanity of their New York City college lives to reinvent themselves in Berlin, leading to unexpectedly dark consequences. At the end of their sophomore year, Zoe Beech and Hailey Mader are both ready to escape New York and the hypercompetitive culture of their art college, where the irreverent "sculpture bros" are universally worshiped and "the easiest way to dismiss a female's work [is] by calling it domestic." Zoe, though, is also spurred by a darker reason: the recent murder of her best friend, Ivy Noble, who'd been a dancer at Juilliard. Once at a study abroad program in Berlin, Zoe quickly grows close with her classmate Hailey, the magnetic, brazen daughter of a Midwestern supermarket-chain mogul. The two navigate their way through dark and isolating Berlin, waiting in hundred-person lines for exclusive clubs, attending insular gallery shows and art classes with fossilized professors, always slightly removed from the heart of the city's social scene. Things shift, though, when they begin subletting an apartment from a creepy, enigmatic duo: Beatrice Becks, a helmet-haired mystery novelist, and her mother, Janet. In the perpetually dark apartment, the two become fixated with Beatrice; the more they sift through her "tax filings, photo albums and letters," the more unsettlingly present she feels. As Zoe and Hailey compete socially and stumble their way through drug-filled parties wearing elaborate vintage costumes, they aim to live out the increasingly risky, brightly colored nights of their dreams, fueled by Hailey's dictum that "art is what you can get away with," no matter the cost. Henkel masterfully brings every inch of Hailey and Zoe's world to life with her live-wire prose: German, for instance, sounds as violent as "a car being compressed into a cube." But what truly pushes the plot forward is the obsessive, psychologically damaging friendship between Zoe and Hailey, which slowly leads them from a cocoon of insulated partying to a state of real danger: a finely negotiated shift. Though the book's middle grows a little long and unwieldy, its specter of mystery is tantalizing and will keep readers captive till the final page. Absorbing and electric.

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