The Artificial Silk Girl

Driven into hiding, her books banned by the Nazis, Irmgard Keun could have vanished from literary history, another nameless victim of persecution. Instead—thankfully—a few independent presses have recently brought her books back into the public eye. The latest addition, The Artificial Silk Girl, reissued by Other Press, is proof that the loss of Keun's voice would have been a loss for readers everywhere. Doris, an office worker with delusional dreams of becoming a glamorous movie star, fills the pages of her diary in a chatty, impressionistic, first-person voice, detailing her constant struggle to make ends meet, her schemes to get noticed as an actress, and the challenges of exploring her sexuality in a newly permissive culture while surrounded by a circle of predaceous men. Forced to leave town after a series of lies catches up with her, she moves to Berlin with the hope for a new beginning, but bad luck, a good heart, and a guilty conscience have other plans for her. Keun writes with inspired energy, and her Doris is like an awestruck child and a canny operator at the same time, churning out poetic observations, shrewd calculations, and jokes wrapped around barbed insights. Though the storyline is not unfamiliar, the real pleasures of The Artificial Silk Girl lie in the vitality and fluidity of Keun's spirited voice, the re-emergence of which is cause for celebration.