Bridget van der Zijpp's I Laugh Me Broken is a poignant time capsule

Bridget van der Zijpp. Photo / Jo Currie

This is the socially acceptable order of things: you travel in your 20s, you try on a few different identities, you "find" yourself. Then you come home and reminisce for the rest of your days.

Except that is not what happens for many of us and it is almost a relief to read a story in which complicated, quirky middle-aged people throw caution to the wind, make mistakes and learn to live with the consequences.

In Auckland writer Bridget van der Zijpp's third novel, I Laugh Me Broken, the appealingly awkward Ginny moves to Berlin - ostensibly to work on a novel about the braggadocious Count Felix von Luckner - but really to figure out how she feels about the possibility that she may have inherited the neurodegenerative disorder Huntington's disease.

She leaves her fiance Jay behind in New Zealand, clueless as to the source of her crisis, and moves into a bohemian city-centre flat with adventurous Aussie Frankie and the mysterious Florian - they only know if he is home by checking his towel in the bathroom. Ginny distracts herself with a flirtatious neighbour, language classes and some vicarious risk-taking.

"You don't go to Berlin to set up a cosy house in the suburbs and have kids," says van der Zijpp. "You go to Berlin at the point in your life that you're wanting to change. There is lots of freedom of expression, lots of subcultures. I was quite attracted to people who were doing quite rash things. You meet people and have really intense conversations and get to know them and then they disappear."

Her well-informed, wry prose is smooth as butter. Her Berlin is highly immersive and diverting but not escapist; van der Zijpp forces the reader to figure out what they would do in Ginny's place. Momentarily distracted by sex clubs and mid-winter gluhwein tents, we can't ignore the elephant in the novel.

"Huntington's has a very clear genetic path," explains van der Zijpp. "If one of your parents has it, you have a 50 per cent chance of having it and fewer than 20 per cent of the people in that situation get tested. The biggest fear I would have would be losing my brain capacity. I was interested in this idea - would you want to know?"

I Laugh Me Broken draws on van der Zijpp's experience writing grant proposals and newsletters for the Neurological Foundation and her four years living in Berlin until Covid-19 drove her home early in 2020.

Like Ginny, she went to the German capital to write about Count von Luckner, a German naval captain who spent time in the Pacific, was a prisoner of war at Motuihe Island and famously escaped after promising he wouldn't. He was the subject of a book popular in New Zealand between the World Wars.

"We like the cheeky, audacious character," says van der Zijpp, who liked him too, until US President Donald Trump began to remind her of von Luckner and she "became disenchanted with him".

In the book the count serves as a cumbersome homework assignment - something Ginny is meant to be doing instead of exploring the city or spending time with her unreliable half-sister, Mel.

Van der Zijpp, now the programme manager for the Auckland Writers Festival, intended to stay in Germany for another couple of years. In February 2020 she booked a flight home to spend time with her ill sister as Covid-19 spread across northern Italy, unsure what was about to happen to international travel. She planned a six-week visit.

Days later cases had popped up in Germany, most associated with a super-spreader event in Cologne and Singapore announced the airport would close to transit passengers from Germany.

"I brought my flight forward and went that night," recalls van der Zijpp. "I hurriedly packed a bag, got on a train and off I went. By the time I got to Singapore, New Zealand had announced that returning passengers would have to go into isolation."

It was surreal, as everyone's initial experience of Covid-19 was. When it became obvious she wasn't going to be returning to Berlin, van der Zijpp asked a friend to empty her flat and she set to work rewriting the book, so that it would end as the pandemic took off.

The result is a poignant time capsule, a surprising love story and a clever take on the hapless-woman-finds-herself genre.

By Eleanor Black

I Laugh Me Broken, by Bridget van der Zijpp (VUP, $30), is out now.