As the title of you book suggests, your novel is about a choir, or more specifically, a women’s choir. Why did you choose to put this choir at the centre of your narrative?
Essentially, every choir, regardless of what kind it is, is a leap of faith. Not only for the people running them, but for everyone who decides to sing in them: you have to leave the confines of your home, meet strangers, from other parts of the city, from other countries or social classes, you have stand in front of each, open your mouth, and use your voice, and then approach each other during breaks, spend a large number of hours together. And after jumping over all these hurdles, these individuals try to merge together to create a single sound. Of course, at first glance, the world of choirs tends to reflect the contours of our starkly fragmented society, with people divided up into professionals and amateurs, highbrow and lowbrow, into genders, professions, religious denominations, sexual orientations – there is a choir to fit every bubble. But an unambitious amateur choir like my »Cantarinen« brings people together who would never have met under other circumstances. This is precisely where the adventure begins as a storyteller. It is also important to me to create characters who are not the same age as me or who come from a different background, such as Cora and her son, or Lena and Sylvia. In Germany, people still firmly believe that our society is almost devoid of class divisions, that you can climb the social ladder through education. But unfortunately, the reality is quite different and is moving further and further away from this ideal. Now, as a writer, I’m no realist, but I feel a deep commitment to the present, to depict snippets of our lives. That’s why I chose a women’s choir for this novel.
Friendship is an important theme in your novel. What do you look for in a good friendship?
The friendships between these singing women, who affectionately call each other »choir sisters«, are central to the novel. But friendships can be complex and dangerous things, every bit as difficult as love relationships. And without love in the best sense of the word, a friendship just can’t work, right? In my novel, the friends also exert power over each other, just like partners in a couple, and they make demands of each other: asking for loyalty, fidelity, undivided attention, and thoughtful consideration. Of course, there is also betrayal, just as there is among couples. And then things become bitter and malicious. Friendships are important to me, with both women and men. Nevertheless, I feel ambivalent about the tremendous demands that women in particular make on their best friends. The things they demand sometimes border on the superhuman and often make me think of Schiller’s »Die Bürgschaft«, in which one friend risks life and limb for another. I admire this ideal, but I’m satisfied if my friends endure me in my otherness and offer me not just a carbon copy of myself, but contradiction, disagreement. For that, I am grateful.
Do you enjoy singing yourself?
I am an enthusiastic singer, however I am incurably bad, which is why I don’t sing in a choir. I passionately indulge only when I know that nobody is listening. .
