Hey everybody, how you doing? Welcome to The Other People Show. I'm Brad Listy. I am in Los Angeles, California. How are you? What's happening out there? I hope you're doing okay. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe to the other people show wherever you listen.

You can also subscribe on YouTube.

Today, my guest is B Setton, author of the debut novel, Berlin.

I mean, it happened when I realized that I wanted, I was kind of skiving off my job

or pretending to do my job and I was writing.

And I was, and I felt there was momentum beyond myself.

It was like nearly, I don't know, it was like a stone falling, rolling down a hill or something.

Suddenly I got caught up in it.

And I was like, oh, there's, something's happening here. I mean, I think from the beginning, I, because of the kind of stuff that I watch and read, I instinctively created suspense, but I was rolling down a hill and I had no idea, like, in what direction that suspense was going. And so that was, like, the problem that I had to work on later. But if you create suspense, it kind of keeps your writing going because you've created a debt with a reader in a certain sense and you have to pay it back. And I was kind of interested to see where the story would go as well. So I had not plotted it at all. But I remember a very specific moment when I was meant to be working and I was like secretly writing. And I was like, okay, this is a story that I want to engage with seriously.

All right. That was B. Seton. Her debut novel, Berlin, is available now in the United States from

Penguin Books. And it is a very auspicious debut that is narrated by a young female protagonist named

Daphne Ferber. Daphne has fled her life in London. She's in her 20s. She bails on all of her

friends, her job in London, and she moves to Berlin, hoping to reinvent herself.

But, of course, what she finds is that new difficulties inevitably present themselves in her new hometown, in Germany.

And she has to contend with them. And eventually eventually she has to contend with the parts of herself that she would rather not look at.

This is a very psychologically astute and very sharply observed novel.

It's got a great dark sense of humor.

Daphne Ferber is a very memorable character for a variety of reasons, for her cutting wit, for her erudition, her contradictions,

for the ways in which she both knows and does not know who she is.

And B. Setton captures Daphne's voice so well.

She really makes her come alive.

I tore through Berlin and I loved meeting and talking with B. Seton.

...