1000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel

Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel 1000 Coils of Fear explores intersections of race, gender and sexuality while questioning the experience of oppression in the face of privilege. The tapestry of voices and differing styles are clear nods to Wenzel’s background as musician and playwright, weaving in moments of biting comedy with dark absurdism.

Wenzel’s unnamed narrator shares a great deal with the author themselves. Black, German and queer, the book is a slow drip-feed into the consciousness of guilt. The use of questioning rhetoric – manifesting as airport security and critical bystanders throughout – points to the culture of suspicion that scaffolds the narrator’s life, the fear of otherness that has dogged her from her childhood in East Germany to her adulthood in America.

Wenzel’s protagonist experiences comparative economic and political freedom from her mother and grandmother which she worries mitigates the "banal racism" she experiences. In doing so, Wenzel mocks whinnying concerns of white scepticism debating which types of racism truly matter and in doing so, mocks her own fragility. As the overwhelming note of the novel points out – the accumulative exhaustion and anxiety of Black identity is ubiquitous and ought not be overlooked. Wenzel’s novel is about an ordinary person living an ordinary life in the shadows of racism and identity politics.

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Dialogue Books, 10 Nov