Oval. Elvia Wilk
Oval
“A fascinating near-future exploration of relationships, sustainability, and power. An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel.”
—JEFF VANDERMEER, author of Borne and Annihilation
“So good, so dark, so funny, so cruelly smart about where we are and where we’re going. This book is a petri dish growing a new strain of heartbreak. I’m sick with love for it.”
—SHELLEY JACKSON, author of Riddance and Half Life
“With wit and precision, Elvia Wilk pinpoints the moment when neoliberalism metastasizes into something far more sinister.”
—TOM McCARTHY, author of Satin Island and Remainder
“J. G. Ballard meets William Gibson meets Jeff VanderMeer. Oval is an up-to-the-minute story about the twilight zones of corporate design, aesthetics, pharmacy, and bioengineering, where there’s nothing consultants won’t break in the quest for ‘innovation.’ What could possibly go wrong? Find out in Elvia Wilk’s crisp and stylish debut book.”
—McKENZIE WARK, author of Molecular Red and A Hacker Manifesto
“Everything is work—mourning, clubbing, reading your partner’s moods. And everything is a scam—plants that become buildings, jobs that become consultancies, apps that become jobs. With astonishing emotional accuracy, Oval records what it feels like to hover between two poles.”
—SASHA FRERE-JONES
“Wonderfully clever and beguiling. The circle may be absolute, but the oval remains restless and bursts with potential.”
—CHLOE ARIDJIS, author of Sea Monsters and Book of Clouds
“As a social comedy of modern relationships and gentrifying Berlin, Elvia Wilk’s debut is exquisitely funny and exquisitely well observed. But it also has something weirder spliced into its DNA: fragments of the future that transform this story into a fabulous biopunk hybrid that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever read.”
—NED BEAUMAN, author of Madness Is Better Than Defeat and The Teleportation Accident
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 by Elvia Wilk
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wilk, Elvia, author.
Title: Oval / Elvia Wilk.
Description: New York : Soft Skull, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045888 | ISBN 9781593764050 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Dystopias.
Classification: LCC PS3623.I5452 O93 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045888
Cover design & art direction by salu.io
Book design by Jordan Koluch
Published by Soft Skull Press
1140 Broadway, Suite 704
New York, NY 10001
www.softskull.com
Soft Skull titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West
Phone: 866-400-5351
Printed in the United States of America
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FOR MY FRIENDS
Contents
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Acknowledgments
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, “Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.”
—KURT VONNEGUT
AFTER DEATH, BUREAUCRACY TAKES THE WHEEL. FUNERAL arrangements, bank account closures, insurance payouts. Unpaid taxes. Unforgiven debts. For some, the cascade of paperwork adds an unbearable layer of responsibility. For others, the onslaught helps to smother the grief. Louis, Anja decided, was clearly the latter.
The bureaucracy was all he could talk about. The only information he sent her way while he was gone came as a series of text messages describing the string of post-death logistics. He was at the lawyer’s office again. He was packing boxes. Then he was buying more Sprite and crackers for the retirees. Emoji, emoji. Blaming the time difference, he never found a moment to talk on the phone.
The last time she had heard his voice was when he had called two weeks before from the departure lounge at Brandenburg to tell her the news. His mom, dead. His voice had sounded so unconcerned she had asked if he was joking. Apparently, he had booked a flight back to the U.S., left work, and headed straight for the airport, all before calling his girlfriend. Anja was sure he was in shock. She was the one who broke down crying when he called.
He hadn’t told her he was coming back to Berlin until he was already at the airport at the opposite end in Indianapolis. Just a one-line text message listing his arrival time, with hearts planted between the numbers.
Anja was waiting for him when his plane landed in the early afternoon. Arrivals, with its faceted glass ceiling, felt like a cramped greenhouse or the inside of an empty perfume bottle with foul mist trapped inside. Around her, families regrouped, Erasmus students