Thrillers & Suspense
![Calla Henkel - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B093J494K6.jpg)
Other People's Clothes: A Novel
Two American ex-pats obsessed with the Amanda Knox trial find themselves at the nexus of murder and celebrity in glittering late-aughts Berlin in this "hugely entertaining" (The New York Times) debut with a wicked sense of humor.
"Darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive... [a] harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets." -Megan Abbott, best-selling author of The Turnout
Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in the bohemian capital of Europe-Berlin. Rudderless, Zoe relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star.
When Hailey stumbles on a posting for a high-ceilinged, prewar sublet by well-known thriller writer Beatrice Becks, the girls snap it up. They soon spend their nights twisting through Berlin's club scene and their days hungover. But are they being watched? Convinced that Beatrice intends to use their lives as inspiration for her next novel, Hailey vows to craft main-character-worthy personas. They begin hosting a decadent weekly nightclub in the apartment, finally gaining the notoriety they've been craving. Everyone wants an invitation to "Beatrice's." As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living-and how it will end.
Other People's Clothes brilliantly illuminates the sometimes dangerous intensity of female friendships, as well as offering an unforgettable window into millennial life and the lengths people will go to in order to eradicate emotional pain.
"Darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive... [a] harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets." -Megan Abbott, best-selling author of The Turnout
Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in the bohemian capital of Europe-Berlin. Rudderless, Zoe relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star.
When Hailey stumbles on a posting for a high-ceilinged, prewar sublet by well-known thriller writer Beatrice Becks, the girls snap it up. They soon spend their nights twisting through Berlin's club scene and their days hungover. But are they being watched? Convinced that Beatrice intends to use their lives as inspiration for her next novel, Hailey vows to craft main-character-worthy personas. They begin hosting a decadent weekly nightclub in the apartment, finally gaining the notoriety they've been craving. Everyone wants an invitation to "Beatrice's." As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living-and how it will end.
Other People's Clothes brilliantly illuminates the sometimes dangerous intensity of female friendships, as well as offering an unforgettable window into millennial life and the lengths people will go to in order to eradicate emotional pain.
Editorial Reviews
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, The Millions, Literary Hub, NY Post, PopSugar, Apartment Therapy, Book Riot, E! News
One of Glamour's Best Books of the Year • A GOOP Book Club Pick
"Hugely entertaining."
-New York Times
"Gleefully raunchy."
-Washington Post
"In Henkel's exciting and visceral debut novel, two New York art students spend a year in Berlin, where they get caught up in a swirl of seedy nightclubs and cut-rate booze. Their toxic entanglement is the true star here, but there are plenty of wild revelations to keep a reader turning the pages."
-New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
"Other People's Clothes is a gritty take on toxic female friendships...Expect a slow burn that's deliciously dark."
-Time Magazine
"Calla Henkel's Other People's Clothes is darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive. I couldn't stop turning the pages as this witty, harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets unfolded. This is a debut you won't want to miss."
-Megan Abbott, author of The Turnout
"What a rush! Reading Other People's Clothes is like being granted entry to the best party on earth, a night to end all nights with Andy Warhol, Donna Tartt, and Graham Greene on the host committee. Calla Henkel's young and beautiful buccaneers of Berlin show us how to turn mere fantasies into rocket fuel, how to rearrange reality into a collage of depravity and dopamine hits. Why hit the sack when you can live life to the last drop? This book is fun with a capital F."
-Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She
"Other People's Clothes feels like reading a thriller by your most acerbic fri...
One of Glamour's Best Books of the Year • A GOOP Book Club Pick
"Hugely entertaining."
-New York Times
"Gleefully raunchy."
-Washington Post
"In Henkel's exciting and visceral debut novel, two New York art students spend a year in Berlin, where they get caught up in a swirl of seedy nightclubs and cut-rate booze. Their toxic entanglement is the true star here, but there are plenty of wild revelations to keep a reader turning the pages."
-New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
"Other People's Clothes is a gritty take on toxic female friendships...Expect a slow burn that's deliciously dark."
-Time Magazine
"Calla Henkel's Other People's Clothes is darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive. I couldn't stop turning the pages as this witty, harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets unfolded. This is a debut you won't want to miss."
-Megan Abbott, author of The Turnout
"What a rush! Reading Other People's Clothes is like being granted entry to the best party on earth, a night to end all nights with Andy Warhol, Donna Tartt, and Graham Greene on the host committee. Calla Henkel's young and beautiful buccaneers of Berlin show us how to turn mere fantasies into rocket fuel, how to rearrange reality into a collage of depravity and dopamine hits. Why hit the sack when you can live life to the last drop? This book is fun with a capital F."
-Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She
"Other People's Clothes feels like reading a thriller by your most acerbic fri...
Readers Top Reviews
RebeccaDarricLucysos
I’m into the twists and turns, but didn’t like any of the characters, so the book was hard for me to stay with.
Teresa FreemanElana
Too much going on. Slooooooooow delivery to the plot. The premise is interesting about how we “put on” looks of those around us to fit in or be loved.
Joe Kessler
A darkly twisted tale of two toxically codependent young women studying abroad for art school, drawing on the infamous Amanda Knox scandal as well as debut author Calla Henkel's own experiences as an American expat in Berlin. I'm from the same area of Florida as this writer, so I am also pleased by the authenticity of her descriptions of the heroine's hometown (even if the audiobook reader regrettably mispronounces the name of one of our local restaurants, Capt Hiram's -- come on, there's a catchy TV jingle for it and everything). The plot is very heavy on partying, drug abuse, and the exploration of budding sexuality, but always in service to conveying how messed-up these characters are, rather than feeling in any way sensational or gratuitous. And although matters do turn predictably violent by the end, I appreciate how the story nevertheless goes in some unexpected directions, while never seeming built around the sort of big gimmicky twist that's become common in this genre. Overall it's a great and vivid piece of writing, albeit not one I'd recommend for anyone who needs a relatable / likable protagonist in their fiction. I'd be incredibly frustrated with people like Zoe and her friends in real life, but I've found their downward spiral to be rendered quite irresistible on the page. [Content warning for alcohol abuse including drunk driving, sexual assault, domestic abuse, disordered eating, and gore.]
Jim28Alokita Sharma
Started well with a brooding theme of american exchange students in Berlin. Author captures the bar scene and costumes and the atmosphere of Berlin. Midway, it falters and characters become caricatures as there is an unending description of bars, art scenes, dresses, subways (but no autobahns). For some time, you begin regretting why you finished it as the ending is a mess like she wanted to finish the novel and wait for its outcome.
J. Dooley
Readers looking for a standard mystery novel may find this book disappointing. For some reason early on in the novel, I started thinking about similarities to Less Than Zero, written to much acclaim (or controversy) back in the 80s. Once the action shifted to Berlin, the similarities were readily apparent - college kids trying to find their way, drugs, partying, sexual identity, etc .... While I wasn't put off by the oft-cited slow build-up here, the mystery part doesn't really kick in until the second half of the book (perhaps too late for some). In other words, we something of a social commentary here wrapped up in a murder mysrtery. Maybe too much going on as well ... But having read some other recent highly touted books like 'Night Bitch' and 'A Touch of Jen", both of which I found to be just okay and a bit too bizarro, this book stands out as a much better read, a good plot with good twists, believable (though not always likable) characters.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
"Start from the beginning," she insisted and if I were allowed to smoke, I would have lit a cigarette. I was never good at telling stories and this one always felt like it belonged to someone else; I had been young and stupid. I had been idealistic. I was twenty. Maybe I could start from the first slide of art history class-a black diorite pillar. Hammurabi's code: two hundred and eighty-two laws and sliding punishments for eighteenth-century-bc justice, some seemingly logical, an eye for an eye, a surgeon's hand for a botched surgery, a builder's life for a collapsed building, some more bizarre-the guilt of the adulterer judged by whether or not they sank when thrown in water-all etched out onto a seven-foot column. But there was nothing for me on the cold black stone. No law had been engraved to deliver due process for what happened to me last year. I had no idea whose hand to chop off.
"Okay. Well, what about her first words? What did she say when you got here?"
I sat silent, arms tightly folded, unable to understand Frau Klein's persistent interest in the beginning.
The Spa was only for women, all of whom were present for different disorders, and some diseases, most unknown to me. But everyone knew why I was there. I was famous, and the angular whispers of the nurses and patients followed me through the concrete building. However, I found comfort in their efforts to mask these remarks, knowing all too well that outside the Spa there was no reason to whisper. By the time Berlin's summer was blazing, we-Hailey Mader and myself, Zoe Beech-were all anyone could talk about.
Sprawling and old, the Spa was situated in a converted primary school somewhere in northern Brandenburg. Its hallways still smelled chalky like the inside of a brick, and most of the bedrooms, once classrooms, were shared by two or three girls. But I was alone, living in what I assumed had once been a very generous broom closet, with my own square window, blue-painted chair with matching desk, and a porcelain sink adorned with a halo of dark-brownish mold. I liked to imagine that the ring of mold was a well-run city of tiny spores, filled with good, nonviolent mold citizens, maybe even with mold artists and mold curators doing coke at tiny mold clubs.
I spent most of my time in this sort of useless daydream, elbows pressed into the soft wood of the desk, staring out at the unbearably still farmland and then, lightning, an interruption to my doldrums: a body writhing in a lake of blood, flashes strobing, sound blaring, like a Rihanna music video, or a trailer for a horror film. And just as fast as it crested, I'd snap back to the barren field or mildewy sink or the constellation of moles on Frau Klein's neck.
Frau Klein loved the word par-a-noi-a, letting each syllable slip like a ping-pong ball out of her wet mouth. She was in her early forties but dressed for her sixties, with roadkill-brown hair and potato-sack skirts. We had at this point spent many hours together and I was certain she was living vicariously through me, filling the void of her own existence with my answers and traumas, extracting information she would eventually sell to the tabloids, or her own tell-all.
"Zoe, how did sex make you feel?"
"Did you ever fantasize about Hailey?"
Her voice sounded scripted as if she were recording an audiocassette from a language class.
"What drugs did you do?"
"What pushed you to do them?"
I watched in disinterested horror, as the saliva began to surface at the edges of her thin lips, thirsty for my reply.
"I did what was around."
She nodded. More questions. Whenever I mentioned the name Beatrice her eyes flickered and she would take her stubby blue pen and quietly draw a shape in her notebook. Frau Klein entertained my theories but she always returned to the same head tilt: "And what makes you so sure Beatrice was watching you?"
"She read my emails."
"And how can you know that?"
"I told you already-"
"But is it possible you imagined it?"
"No."
Frau Klein made another shape in her notebook then checked the clock. The stainless-steel lamp on her desk cast an orange circle on her overmoisturized cheek, her skin hanging loose like the Mask of Agamemnon or a glob of half-baked cookie dough.
"And whose story do you believe you are in right now?"
"Yours," I said, motioning toward her notepad.
Frau Klein made a suggestive nod. "And let's go back to the beginning again. What were her first words to you when you arrived?"
2
"Guten Tag, Dumpster!" Hailey called, waving a frantic freckled arm across the Hauptbahnhof with an ocher hiking-pack strapped to her athletic frame. She looked ready to move camp every n...
"Start from the beginning," she insisted and if I were allowed to smoke, I would have lit a cigarette. I was never good at telling stories and this one always felt like it belonged to someone else; I had been young and stupid. I had been idealistic. I was twenty. Maybe I could start from the first slide of art history class-a black diorite pillar. Hammurabi's code: two hundred and eighty-two laws and sliding punishments for eighteenth-century-bc justice, some seemingly logical, an eye for an eye, a surgeon's hand for a botched surgery, a builder's life for a collapsed building, some more bizarre-the guilt of the adulterer judged by whether or not they sank when thrown in water-all etched out onto a seven-foot column. But there was nothing for me on the cold black stone. No law had been engraved to deliver due process for what happened to me last year. I had no idea whose hand to chop off.
"Okay. Well, what about her first words? What did she say when you got here?"
I sat silent, arms tightly folded, unable to understand Frau Klein's persistent interest in the beginning.
The Spa was only for women, all of whom were present for different disorders, and some diseases, most unknown to me. But everyone knew why I was there. I was famous, and the angular whispers of the nurses and patients followed me through the concrete building. However, I found comfort in their efforts to mask these remarks, knowing all too well that outside the Spa there was no reason to whisper. By the time Berlin's summer was blazing, we-Hailey Mader and myself, Zoe Beech-were all anyone could talk about.
Sprawling and old, the Spa was situated in a converted primary school somewhere in northern Brandenburg. Its hallways still smelled chalky like the inside of a brick, and most of the bedrooms, once classrooms, were shared by two or three girls. But I was alone, living in what I assumed had once been a very generous broom closet, with my own square window, blue-painted chair with matching desk, and a porcelain sink adorned with a halo of dark-brownish mold. I liked to imagine that the ring of mold was a well-run city of tiny spores, filled with good, nonviolent mold citizens, maybe even with mold artists and mold curators doing coke at tiny mold clubs.
I spent most of my time in this sort of useless daydream, elbows pressed into the soft wood of the desk, staring out at the unbearably still farmland and then, lightning, an interruption to my doldrums: a body writhing in a lake of blood, flashes strobing, sound blaring, like a Rihanna music video, or a trailer for a horror film. And just as fast as it crested, I'd snap back to the barren field or mildewy sink or the constellation of moles on Frau Klein's neck.
Frau Klein loved the word par-a-noi-a, letting each syllable slip like a ping-pong ball out of her wet mouth. She was in her early forties but dressed for her sixties, with roadkill-brown hair and potato-sack skirts. We had at this point spent many hours together and I was certain she was living vicariously through me, filling the void of her own existence with my answers and traumas, extracting information she would eventually sell to the tabloids, or her own tell-all.
"Zoe, how did sex make you feel?"
"Did you ever fantasize about Hailey?"
Her voice sounded scripted as if she were recording an audiocassette from a language class.
"What drugs did you do?"
"What pushed you to do them?"
I watched in disinterested horror, as the saliva began to surface at the edges of her thin lips, thirsty for my reply.
"I did what was around."
She nodded. More questions. Whenever I mentioned the name Beatrice her eyes flickered and she would take her stubby blue pen and quietly draw a shape in her notebook. Frau Klein entertained my theories but she always returned to the same head tilt: "And what makes you so sure Beatrice was watching you?"
"She read my emails."
"And how can you know that?"
"I told you already-"
"But is it possible you imagined it?"
"No."
Frau Klein made another shape in her notebook then checked the clock. The stainless-steel lamp on her desk cast an orange circle on her overmoisturized cheek, her skin hanging loose like the Mask of Agamemnon or a glob of half-baked cookie dough.
"And whose story do you believe you are in right now?"
"Yours," I said, motioning toward her notepad.
Frau Klein made a suggestive nod. "And let's go back to the beginning again. What were her first words to you when you arrived?"
2
"Guten Tag, Dumpster!" Hailey called, waving a frantic freckled arm across the Hauptbahnhof with an ocher hiking-pack strapped to her athletic frame. She looked ready to move camp every n...
