Katharina Volckmer’s hypnotic debut novel The Appointment takes the form of a monologue delivered to a medical doctor during a single appointment. Her acerbic second novel Calls May Be Recorded unfolds over a single day at a London call center. Jimmie’s job is to soothe the ridiculous anxieties of rich vacationers: stray hairs on hotel pillows, infinity pools in the Maldives that aren’t quite infinite. Off the phones, Jimmie is almost thirty and still living with his mother, a woman “forever in love with her own sadness.” Some mornings he goes to work wearing her red lipstick to infuse his days with a soap operatic quality.
Throughout the day, Jimmie endures humiliations both corporate and personal: a looming meeting with his sinister boss, an ex-fling's promotion, and a carousel of phone calls that veer from hilarity to despair. Volckmer skewers the banality of customer-service culture with dark wit, but she also makes room for tenderness, showing how even the bleakest cubicle can foster flashes of connection. It’s a filthy and unexpectedly moving portrait of longing in a world desperate for us to stick to the script.
Describe Calls May Be Recorded in three words.
Funny, physical, desperate.
If this novel were a song, what would it be?
Some 90s trash.
Favorite time and place to write?
Afternoon/ early evening. I like doing first drafts/ sketches in public, in a cafe or on a train and for everything that comes after that I prefer my little office at home.
Best writing advice you’ve received?
I once heard Paul Auster say at an event that authors should write a lot and publish little, that made a lot of sense to me.
How was writing Calls May Be Recorded different from writing The Appointment?
Calls was written during the pandemic and I don’t remember much of the process, but it was accompanied by a lot of second-novel-anxiety and the desire to do something that was different from The Appointment. I sometimes miss the freedom with which I wrote before I was published, it’s different once you have ‘an audience.’
Do you outline or wing it or somewhere in between?
I wing it, I never know where the next sentence will take me which isn’t always a good thing but I find it hard to plan ahead.
What part of Calls May Be Recorded was most fun to write?
I loved writing the dialogues, I used to work in a call centre myself and they made me feel vindicated.
What are your most overused words?
Maybe, suddenly, smile, despair.
If Calls May Be Recorded is adapted, who needs to play Jimmie? Elin? Simon? What about the unnamed protagonist of The Appointment?
I think Dan Levy would make for a great Jimmie, he would need to put on some weight though and grow out his hair. Or a young John Belushi. I have been blessed to see The Appointment on stage several times, Camille Cottin was starring in the French stage version and she would also be perfect for a movie adaptation. She has a wonderful European accent when she speaks English, which I love.
If you could get a drink with any fictional character, who would it be?
Paddington Bear? Miss Marple? Count Dracula? Hans Castorp? The narrator of In Search of Lost Time? Sancho Panza? Elisabeth Bennett? Josef K? Ariel? So many come to mind.
What’s a book that made you want to write?
I wish I had a more glamorous or interesting answer, but the first time (as far as I remember) that I thought I could be a writer was after reading Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers. My books have nothing in common with her, but maybe I will change career one day and start writing love stories set in idyllic landscapes.
What’s your relationship to self-promotion?
I draw the line at unboxing videos.
What author’s (dead or alive) persona is aspirational?
Olga Tokarczuk.
Favorite recent read?
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg.
Two words to describe what you’re working on now?
Pancake Soup.
