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The Appointment

A Novel

Bestselling Fiction

by Katharina Volckmer

Narrator Katharina Volckmer

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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Length 2 hours 53 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to listen to someone's most intimate, darkest thoughts? Then this quick, stream-of-consciousness novel about one person's uninterrupted, verbal unburdening to their doctor is the perfect thing for you to read next! Bitingly funny, unabashedly raunchy, quiely devastating, and oftentimes openly repugnant, Volckmer's debut novel unexpectedly explores repression, sexuality, and gender. ”
— Lambie • Underground Books

Bookseller recommendation

“This quick listen, read by the author, packs a punch. Intense and dark, with biting humor that often caught me off-guard, The Appointment is a stream-of-consciousness monologue of a patient talking to a doctor during an examination. Through this monologue, we learn about the patient’s history, fantasies, and self-image. Sometimes disturbing and always riveting, this psychological journey is well worth the listen. I highly recommend it and can’t wait for more from Katharina Volckmer!”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store

Bookseller recommendation

“Another bookseller recommended I listen to this. WOW. A stream of conscious thoughts of someone at their doctors appointment. Dark, fascinating, quirky, and well written. ”
— Tricia • Mostly Books

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

“A darkly funny untangling of national and sexual identity.” —The Guardian * “Transgressive...Incendiary.” —The New Yorker * “A furious comic monologue...with a disregard for propriety worthy of Alexander Portnoy.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Sexy, hilarious, and subversive.” —The Paris Review

For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Han Kang, a whip-smart debut novel in which a woman on the verge of major change addresses her doctor in a stream of consciousness narrative.

In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds forth about her life and desires, her struggles with her sexuality and identity. Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years, determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. But the recent death of her grandfather, and an unexpected inheritance, make it clear that you cannot easily outrun your own shame, whether it be physical, familial, historical, national, or all of the above.

Or can you? With Dr. Seligman’s help, our narrator will find out.

In a monologue that is both deliciously dark and subversively funny, she takes us on a wide-ranging journey from Hitler-centered sexual fantasies and overbearing mothers to the medicinal properties of squirrel tails and the notion that anatomical changes can serve as historical reparation. The Appointment is an audacious debut novel by an explosive new international literary voice, challenging all of our notions of what is fluid and what is fixed, and the myriad ways we seek to make peace with others and ourselves in the 21st century.