Positions

Nadine Kroll wrote a book called Stellungswechsel—roughly, a change of position—about moving to Berlin as a young woman and figuring out what you want sexually, what feels good, what you’re allowed to admit wanting. She wrote it plainly, without the usual performance.

The book covers desire in its different forms—sex, relationships, the things you think late at night and don’t mention to anyone. She was crude when it warranted, always direct, sometimes funny. There was something genuinely rare about that kind of honesty, especially as a woman writing it.

Reading it years later, what got me was how real the voice sounded. Not polished or artistic, just actually hers. No stylistic flourish, no performance. She was describing her own life and described it straight.

Most of it isn’t even about sex, really. It’s about the moment you realize you don’t have to be the person people trained you to be. That you can want what you want and say it. That the good girl they constructed doesn’t have to be who you are.

Writing like that—without apology, without flinching—doesn’t happen very often. The book got published and she became a real writer, which is its own kind of uncommon. Most people don’t manage it.