The Appointment: A Novel (Bestselling Fiction)

by Katharina Volckmer

but with a mother it makes hardly any difference. It’s not like you will ever be free from her love, from that animal-like affection that would follow its children to the darkest of dens,

A father’s love can’t be compared to that; there is an element of choice in it—it’s something you can win and, of course, something that you can lose. Gaining our father’s love is, in many ways, our first achievement,

because I always thought that silence was better than an open disappointment, than telling him a story he would never be able to understand.

they are like American films about the Holocaust, they turn everything into a cliché until you feel like you’re being fucked by Ronald McDonald and you wish there was an electric fence somewhere nearby.

That’s probably why I like to think about this story—not so much because of the squirrel-tail masturbation but because of what it says about love and about how it really is an egoistic pursuit, how it’s irresponsible to let someone fall in love with you and yet impossible to avoid.