I Laugh Me Broken

On the pretence of researching her latest project, a New Zealand writer leaves her life and bolts to Berlin when she discovers her late mother may have passed on the gene for Huntington's disease.

'Chaotic modernity is . . . narrated with astute clarity' i-D Magazine

A fearless novel that tackles a difficult subject, I laugh me broken tells the story of a woman finding the courage to face her genetic heritage.

When Ginny makes contact with her estranged relatives and discovers that her genetic heritage may contain a devastating fault, she bolts to Berlin, leaving her loving fiancé in the dark.

Rather than face up to the life-changing implications of this news, she loses herself in the transient, hedonistic city. As she meets its inhabitants and absorbs their tangle of stories, she tries to gather the courage to take the genetic test that will either free her or define her future.

I laugh me broken is a sharply-drawn, courageous novel exploring the human condition, the inescapability of the past and the choices that are ours to make.

Vorwort

• Galleys available for booksellers, press, media and influencers – both digital and physical. 

• Broad campaign for coverage in newspaper and magazines in the UK and USA such as The Guardian and the New York Times, as well as relevant magazines such as Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Breathe Magazine. Focus on outlets targeted to women in twenties and thirties, with whom the protagonist will resonate.

• Targeted influencer campaign with focus on Instagram and TikTok, to hit the key demographic for this title. Instagram readalong tour planned for week of publication. 

• Pitching Bridget for radio and podcast appearances. She is well spoken and knows her subject and would do well being interviewed for Times Radio, with the title being ideal to feature on NPR or BookRiot.

• Entry to relevant awards such as the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Wellcome Prize. 

• Seeking endorsements from relevant authors such as Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Deborah Levy.

Autorentext
Bridget van der Zijpp is the author of three novels: Misconduct, In the Neighbourhood of Fame and I Laugh Me Broken. Misconduct was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize, South East Asia and the Pacific Region. It was also shortlisted for the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Best First Book of Fiction, and was also included in the NZ Listener Best Books of 2008. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University.

Leseprobe

When I first saw the small balcony overlooking an urban park, it perfectly matched my ideas about living in this city, spending time out there, writing. Having arrived in autumn, though, this was probably more romantic than practical. My new housemate, Frankie, had left coffee and bread on the bench in the kitchen. Last night she’d shown me to my room, mentioning something about her job at a co-working space where she wrote content for start-ups including one, she’d said, rolling her eyes, that made luggage suitable for taking into space. 

It was already past noon, and my ears were still ringing from the flight. I took a kitchen chair out through the double doors and sat inhaling deeply, replacing the stagnancy of twenty-four hours of filtered cabin air. The trees were only just beginning their seasonal turn, and from the playground nearby I could hear the screeches of kids having fun. Also the odd phrase: ‘Spinnst du?’ Down below was a small courtyard, its surrounding walls covered in tags and graffiti. Somebody had taken the time to spray the word Hundstage in large letters. Dog days. A band? A movement? 

Soon a group of young teenage boys assembled there, as if it was a regular thing, to play hardcore rap and shit-talk, and the paving created an amphitheatre effect that threw their voices right up to the second storey. My school-level German was not enough to understand what they were saying, but the tone of it was posturing and raucous. They sniffed something off the blade of one boy’s knife and then took off their jackets and started wrestling with each other, jumping off low walls, practising something that looked like a mix of capoeira and parkour. 

I retreated back inside, but a person can sit at the table in their new apartment, in a city that’s unknown to them, telling themselves they are well, but that doesn’t mean they are. I let uncomfortable thoughts seep in like a pernicious gas. Ordinary tiredness? My fingers tingling? Overthinking? I had actually done something on the plane that I was having trouble explaining to myself. I’d stolen an expensive pen from the man with a gurgling stomach who had sat next to me on the last leg. He’d been using it to mark some business papers and I’d caught occasional glimpses of flow charts, lists of names and numbered paragraphs. Without really knowing anything, I decided his work was sinister, so when he eased out of his seat to go to the toilet I slipped his fat silver pen into my bag, like an operative whose job it is to unsettle. When he came back he looked around, and under his seat, and asked in a starkly confronting manner if I’d seen it. I shrugged and he didn’t press further, but for the rest of the journey I was made so uncomfortable by his heavy aura of suspicion that I half-wanted him to go to the toilet again so I could put the pen back. So, is this how it starts? Minor oddness. If a person dares to search symptoms, their eyes will swim in and out of focus, and something awful will prickle at the back of their neck . . . usually begins in the extremities of the body . . . involuntary twitches in fingers, toes, and face . . . in the early years a subtle loss of coordination . . . cognitive problems become noticeable . . . difficulty thinking through complicated tasks . . . 

Oh God. Quickly, quickly I deleted the search off my phone, not yet ready to line up any hard facts. Yes, of course I was tired. Just ordinary tiredness. Who wouldn’t be after a flight all the way from New Zealand to Berlin? And that man, well . . . 

There wasn’t anything that resembled butter in the fridge, and not a single piece of matching crockery in the cupboard. Such relaxed disorder made me think of its exact opposite, when Jay had first moved into my place, bringing with him a whole line-up of identical jars neatly labelled with the names of spices and dried pulses. 

I happened to glance out through the window above the sink as an older, tougher-looking group arrived down below, more fully formed, genuinely gangster. The loud talking stopped and all the boys jumped to their feet. The two groups scuffled with each other for a while. There was some violent shoving – one boy was knocked to the ground and bounced up again. There seemed to be dangerous insults being muttered into faces. Would it escalate to the point I needed to ring the police? What even was the number to ring? Eventually the leader of the invaders snatched up the rucksack of one of the others, took something out of it, nodded to his mates, and they all turned around as one and sloped off. The remaining boys suddenly didn’t have much to say to each other. They just sat back down on their bench seats, hunched and humiliated, and turned the sound up extra-loud. 

Too loud. Peak intrusiveness. I wanted them to go away now, and I moved back out to the balcony to observe them more conspicuously from two storeys up, but while they noticed me it wasn’t enough to move them on. 

So, we all sat there, me and some local boys, listening to their rap, right in the heart of Mitte, in the former East, in an area once on the confined side of the wall – I kn…