Deine kalten Hände

Emotionally unavailable artist Jan Unhyon creates fascinating plaster sculptures using moulds of various body parts. But unlike conventional artists, he's only ever been fascinated by deeply imperfect bodies.

Unhyon had always found himself attracted to people with very unconventional personality traits or bodies, such as:
- his uncle whose hands were mangled by a botched attempt at shirking military duty
- a morbidly obese university student, who could never shake her food addiction
- and, eventually, a very physically attractive yet emotionally empty woman.
Each of these people enters into the sculptor's life as a mere passing fancy, but ends up becoming a central fixation in both his personal and professional life.



Deeply uncomfortable, show more and at times downright aggravating, I had a hard time completing this book. On paper, it should have been right up my alley with its tendency to create some truly revolting mental images. Some of it may read as vaguely queasy, such as random people's remarks on the overweight student's distinctive body shape and craving for food. And then there's the very graphic scene of a full-body moulding session. The model panics half-way through, yet the artist only cares about the damage to his work.

Ironically, this intensity was what drew me to the The Vegetarian, the author's most well‑known work. Then again, I was never particularly interested in going vegan, while compulsive eating issues had plagued me since childhood.

It turns out that all this focus on beauty (or rather, the lack of it) can hit me much harder than expected. Although I can normally skip over most uncomfortable topics, even my armour ends up cracking if it keeps getting hit point-blank.



At times, things got so uncomfortable that I had to put the book aside for a good while. Still, I was glad to note that my difficulties were strictly related to psychological discomfort, rather than a linguistic one. And on that note, I was very proud of myself for getting so fluent with my German reading capabilities.

Score: 4.3/5 stars

Your Cold Hands was one of those books that packed quite a punch, despite its flowery cover. It feels like I'll be mulling its message for quite a while.

I can't bring myself to award it full marks, mainly due to all the fancy poetic stuff. But the constant criticism of people's bodies was not easy to get through either. I'd probably need to be way more thick-skinned for this type of blunt criticism. show less