Oval: A Novel

By Elvia Wilk

Bizarre weather. Unprecedented economic disparity. Artists employed by corporations. And the ultimate work of art: Oval, a pill that increases generosity. This unforgettable debut novel asks questions of empathy and power on every scale—from bodies to bureaucracies—to create an unsettling portrait of the future.

In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability,” only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants, and the weather is acting strange. When Anja and Louis are offered a rent-free home on an artificial mountain—yet another eco-friendly initiative run by a corporation—they seize the opportunity, but it isn’t long before the experimental house begins malfunctioning.

After Louis’s mother dies, Anja is convinced he has changed. At work, Louis has become obsessed with a secret project: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user’s brain to be more generous. While Anja is horrified, Louis believes he has found the solution to Berlin’s income inequality. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold.

”A fascinating near-future exploration of relationships, sustainability, and power. An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel." —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne and Annihilation

“Elvia Wilk’s Oval is a marvel. At the core of this seductive, acute, superbly-contemporary update of mid-period J.G. Ballard lies a deep-beating, deep-dreaming heart.” —Jonathan Lethem

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781593764340

Elvia Wilk

Elvia Wilk is an experienced writer and editor who regularly contributes to publications like Frieze, Mousse, and Zeit Online. From 2012 to 2016, she was a founding editor at uncube magazine and went on to become a contributing editor at e-flux journal. She currently spends her time in both New York and Berlin.

Reviews for Oval

[et.carole · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Gurl you move to a mountain with a boy like Louis and you deserve to suffer a little until you buck up and discover the biological truth of the mountain!!! Are you a girlfriend or a SCIENTIST???

[jnmegan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Anja, a scientist from a privileged cosmopolitan background and her boyfriend Louis, an American who works for a ubiquitous non-profit are personified versions neo-liberalism in the futuristic novel Oval. Elvia Wilk describes a near-future Berlin in which the young couple agrees to live in an experimental eco-colony called the Berg. The Berg is a constructed mountain that has been placed on a former airfield by a company that is ostensibly dedicated to developing innovative and rigorously sustainable living solutions. In return for a home built of wholly organic and self-maintaining materials, residents must agree to follow stringent rules and be captured on continuous video. It becomes apparent that the company subsidizing the project, Finster Corp., is actually a shadowy bureaucracy with potentially sinister motives despite its claims. Life on the Berg is also rife with issues, as promises for improvements go unfulfilled, and the vacillating microclimates there create an environment that is “untenable” in the truest sense. Anya and Louis are also having troubles within their relationship, and Anya suspects that Louis has been deeply changed by the recent death of his mother. She also is disturbed by the mysterious way she and her lab partner (both under the employ of Finster) have been reassigned as ambiguous “consultants,” just when they were approaching a breakthrough. Louis’ work also seems to be taking a strange course as he becomes increasingly obsessed with a new drug he is helping to develop. Partying and drug experimentation are sanctioned and even encouraged in this Berlin of Wilk’s imagining. In fact, social connections are monetized and material success can be attained through a system of interpersonal bartering. Oval is a dystopic vision of “leftism” taken too far and a condemnation of political and commercial structures that seek to manipulate and pervert good intentions. Efforts to promote equality become mutated into selfish patronization and mindless philanthropy, serving to distract from the creeping expansion of a monopolizing entity. Wilk’s book is odd and difficult to navigate when it veers into Anya’s more philosophical musings. The second half also introduces science fiction elements that stretch credulity, particularly since the rest of the setting mirrors existing reality so closely. Still, the short novel contains are some interesting and timely topics portrayed in a unique manner that makes this indie release well worth a look.Thanks to the author, Soft Skull Press for post-release copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful thought-provoking premise and follow through, but very forgettable characters and a minimalist plot. The novel is not excessively literary but chocked full of social philosophy.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In an alternate/near future Berlin, Anja lives in a malfunctioning eco house on a steep hill with her American boyfriend, Lewis. It's a world where corporations control everything and artists are contracted to companies, their work and even their bodies part of the corporate machine. The weather has gone haywire, with vast fluctuations taking place within single days. Anja works as a scientist until she's promoted into a consultant role, while her boyfriend grows distant as he works on a new idea. Wilk is more concerned with discussing the philosophical implications of the world of this novel than it is in world-building or character development. It wasn't a bad book, but it also wasn't a terribly interesting one. There are a lot of novels out there exploring possible futures and I would suggest choosing one of them instead of this one.

[kayanelson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2020 TOB--I did not like this book. I think dystopian novels are not my thing. The story seemed disjointed to me. It took so long to get to the point of the "pill". Then the "Berg" was just plain weird especially when Anja lives there for a month while the place is growing wild.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't read too many dystopian novels. The present day can be scary enough that I don't need to insert myself into someone else's fevered imagination of what the future gone terribly wrong might look like. I can appreciate dystopias as critiques of our current society, our obsessions, the goals we strive for, and the many, many ways we get it all wrong, heading to a place from which there is no return but it can be deeply horrifying to read them. Elvia Wilk's debut novel Oval doesn't, perhaps, rise to the level of horrifying, but it shows a sinister and unpleasant future with neoliberalism, corporations, and science run amok.Anja is a scientist who has run simulations in her lab but has yet to run the actual physical experiment. She lives in Berlin with Louis, an American, who is an "artistic" for a non-profit and who is developing a new pill that will induce a chemically-induced, unbridled generosity in the people who take it. The two of them live in the corporately owned Berg, a sustainable, eco-living experimental housing site, a place that is meant to push to the extreme just what it means to live zero waste. Although this near future setting might be initially appealing, as Anja and Louis's story unfolds, it becomes more and more ominous. There is corporate oversight on nearly everything from the house they live in to the jobs they have. Questioning the status quo is actively frowned upon. Technology and engineering are tested without enough safeguards or understanding of the fallout, of which both Anja's unfulfilled experiment and the gradually malfunctioning Berg are emblematic. Unexamined motivations and outcomes abound. But as much as the novel shows these horrors, it is mainly focused on Anja and Louis' crumbling relationship. They become increasingly separate and alone as the entire infrastructure around them also slides into ruin.There is a rising creepiness to the tone of the novel but it's hard to pinpoint why. Anja and Louis seem to be detached characters, with the reader staying fairly remote from them. The descriptions of the relentless social scene, the clubbing, and the constant drug use has the effect of a flashing strobe light on the reader's sensibility, leaving them disoriented. This effect may be intentional on Wilk's part; it certainly isn't pleasant for sure. The themes of the perils of unchecked gentrification, powerful corporations, and a fervent neoliberalism weave uncomfortably throughout the novel. The secondary characters here feel flat and even Louis isn't particularly well defined for the reader. The premise of the novel doesn't really come into focus until well into the story (unless you read the cover copy) and even then, it takes a while to be clear. The ending of the novel is as strange and unsettling as the rest of it and this reader didn't know what to make of it. There's a malevolent reclamation by nature but it's not really organic so what is reclaiming everything, accelerating the decay and ruin, isn't really clear. The world of Oval is one of dissolute human beings, secretive companies, and impending disaster. This is not a world I want to live in.