Emerging Writers Series: Pip Finkemeyer
“I remember reading a quote by Roxanne Gay where she says that you have to live in this little bubble of delusion if you want to create something… because it's the only way you can really do something like write a novel. It was a big thing for me to accept that I was spending all this time writing fiction, but it’s something I'm doing because I'm compelled to do it, even though what happens after is notoriously difficult.”
In Pip Finkemeyer’s debut Sad Girl Novel (2023), the protagonist Kimberley Mueller – an Australian in her twenties living in Berlin – wants to write a book. Well, she wants to want to write a book, but, according to her historian best friend Belinay, she’s too busy romanticising things: drinking too much coffee, smoking too many cigarettes, being lonely, being bad at things. While Bel is caring for her new baby, Kim gets distracted by a rich, handsome American literary agent named Matthew, who seems to be just the thing she needs to write her book – until he isn’t. Ricocheting between delusion and self-doubt, Kim and Bel confront creativity, love and what it means to find your purpose.
I was lucky enough to chat with Pip about the prevalence of ‘sad girl’ novels, the role of delusion in overcoming self doubt and coming of age as a writer in Berlin.
The title is a self aware nod to the genre of the ‘sad girl’ novels. What is a ‘sad girl novel’ and how did you come to write one?
It's kind of tricky to define a sad girl novel, because I think they existed for a long time before the term. I would think of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath as the quintessential sad girl novel, because it's about a young woman at the precipice of some major life decisions who is darkly funny but also deeply saddened by what life has on offer for her. That was from the 60s and then if you go back even further you get to Anna Karenina, who was a sad girl too, in a way. I think that novels have always been a really good medium for sadness, or any sort of deep emotion, and if people think back to their favorite novels, they're probably books that made them cry.
I know that the term started appearing around 2019, after My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and a couple of other titles that defined the genre. Most of the novels are set post-2001 and feature a young female protagonist who is dissatisfied with her life. A sad girl is not someone who's really trying to overcome her sadness, she's just sort of sitting in it. She's accepted it.
I didn't really even intend for it to be such a sad girl novel, I was just inspired by all the books that I love to read. I also love a complicated relationship with a therapist, which I think puts my book in sad girl territory. There's a tendency for your first book to be based on things that you know, even if it's not autobiographical, so the experience of trying to write a novel when it's very commercially difficult was what led me there. And then also trying to write something that sets itself up to be about a romantic obsession which is then turned on its head. That's what I started with – and then I ended up with Sad Girl Novel.
What is it you love about complicated therapists (like Debbie in your book)?
Scenes with therapists are a really good way to show a character's honest, unfiltered thoughts. It's different to an internal monologue because they have to be accountable for how realistic or deluded what they're saying is. So you see what's going on inside their head and then you see the difference when they try and say it out loud. The ways they are self aware and then the ways they really aren't are more exposed.
Kim as a character is a bit of a hot mess. She is both self-obsessed and self destructive, but most of the time it’s done with a wink. Is humour, or self-awareness, an important part of sad girl novels ?
One of the biggest challenges for me in writing, and by far the most important thing for anything I write, is to get the voice right. At times, Kim says things that are very intelligent, but at others times, she just misses these super obvious things. She has this frustratingly circular way of thinking. It's sort of like having a younger friend who's going through something that you've been through, and you can see both how smart they are, but also how someone can still be so stupid about themselves. Her name is also a bit of an in joke with myself: people always mishear my name as ‘Kim.’
Kim is trying to live in this capitalist society but she also wants to write this book – and yet she's crippled by self doubt. Do you think creatives, or writers in particular, suffer from this feeling?
If you think about things statistically, then your chances of success are very slim. It makes it hard to commit to doing something like writing a novel or spending a lot of time on any solo creative work where you're kind of funding yourself. I remember reading a quote by Roxanne Gay, where she says you have to live in this little bubble of delusion when you want to create something. When you go into that world, everything happens exactly as you wanted it to, and despite all odds, everything will be fine with your creative career, because it's the only way you can really do something like write a novel. It was a big thing for me to accept that I was spending all this time writing fiction, but it’s something I'm doing because I'm compelled to do it, even though what happens after is notoriously difficult. So, I was trying to play around with the role of delusion in the creative process in the book as well, and how it can sometimes help you, and sometimes hinder you.
Did you write before you started this novel?
I didn't really write at all when I was in my early 20s, but I did work in bookstores and I studied book publishing, so I was circling around it. When I moved to Berlin, I started writing short stories and I was really lucky to fall into this group of writers that I really liked. I've always liked to write things with an unreliable narrator, where the readers are laughing at the protagonist, but the protagonist is sometimes not in on the joke. So, I was slowly building, block by block, all the components that would go into Kim's voice, and then once I had Kim's voice, that's when the novel came.
Kim says “Everyone was always talking about likeability, but I didn’t care for it. What I cared for was loveability.” But what about relatability?
I definitely didn't anticipate how much people would relate to Kim. That’s been one of the main reactions, which is interesting to me, because I thought it was a very specific thing, but it turns out it’s quite universal. I do think people that age lack confidence, and there's just no way to get the confidence until you've done the thing. I think the whole book can be read as a response to the epigraph by Zadie Smith: “It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.”
Kim’s friendship with Belinay is really the heart of the book. They are both at the cusp of change in their lives, and they are so different, but they give each other what the other is lacking. Why is this friendship so important to each of them?
It was important to me to have part of the book that was really earnest. I didn't want it to be a book that just lightly satirised things, I wanted it to be about a genuine love story. I think the reason that their friendship is so important to them is because they are both transplants to the city, so they don't have their family around them. They sort of lean on each other for everything. And Bel, in particular, is an amalgamation of a bunch of my favourite friends in Berlin, and when you’re out of your element, you need your friends to be your family. It’s also an interesting dynamic between them, with a younger, less experienced person who is maybe more fun and more adventurous, but who really needs the sage words of the older, more serious and accomplished person.
Three major turning points happen to Kim while she’s on a train. What is the significance of trains in the novel?
I think that trains are just an amazing place to set a scene because you can have any random cross-section of society there interacting with each other. It just tells you so much about who someone is by the way that they respond to a stranger. I love that familiarity of when you know a city, whichever city it is, and you can name a train line, or tram line and people instantly have a vision of the type of person on there, and the type of thing that would happen there. For me, trains are a way to connect a lot of different ideas.
You lived in Berlin for five years. What did you take from Berlin as a city?
For creatives, or aspiring creatives, Berlin is really interesting because it has extremely talented people doing really cool things. But it’s also a really unintimidating place to just dip your toe in and get started. The English lit scene is kind of small, so it was really easy to get involved and make friends that way. I was friends with a lot of writers who were doing similar stuff to me. So that really helped me find my voice and learn how to share my work with others and open it up to critique at early stages. I don't think I would write the same way I do if I didn't ‘come of age’ as a writer in Berlin, so to speak. Also, no one was really driven by money; people were driven by lifestyle instead, which did allow for a lot more time to write or just time to be idle, which you need in order to write.
Read an exclusive excerpt from Sad Girl Novel here.
Pip Finkemeyer’s fiction has been listed for the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, the Disquiet Literary Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She completed a Masters in Publishing and Editing at RMIT. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne and Sad Girl Novel is her first novel.
Emily Riches is a writer and editor from Mullumbimby, currently living on Cammeraygal land (Sydney). She founded Aniko Press to bring passionate writers and curious readers together, discover new voices and create a space for creative community. You can get in touch at emily@anikopress.com.