A young woman tries to figure out if she’s the best (a creative genius) or if she’s maybe just the worst (completely delusional).
‘I’d be in heaven but on the edge of a deeper misery than ever, I’d be on top of the world and then they’d ask me, did you make the right choice Kim? Are you currently, still, making the right choices Kimberley Mueller?’
Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation.
Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. She's been convinced of this idea by Matthew, an American literary agent who is as emotionally unavailable as he is handsome (very). Kim lives in her own carefully constructed reality, which her imagination is constantly pumping full of hot air. As she attempts to buoy herself using other people for external motivation, they poke holes in her fantasies, leading her to wonder if she’s going to come crashing down or somehow stay afloat.
Meanwhile Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth to a baby, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not seem to. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can.
In the face of probable failure, how do we convince ourselves to try and become something anyway? And how do we live with the choices we make?
‘While Kimberley Mueller spends a lot of time wondering whether she's talented, Finkemeyer need have no such doubts. Finkemeyer's narrator--with her gift for both self-delusion and self-awareness--is a stroke of genius. Sad Girl Novel achieves all we can ask of contemporary fiction: it mocks and sympathises in equal measure. I closed it feeling better able to laugh at myself.’ DIANA REID, author of Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People