Martina Hefter's Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? has sparked considerable debate in German literary circles. Winning the country's most prestigious fiction award in 2024 and selling 80,000 copies quickly, the novel divided critics. Die Zeit compared its seductive power to the love scammers it portrays, while Deutschlandfunk Kultur criticized its shallow characters and monotonous dialogue.
A Promising Premise
The premise is instantly captivating: Juno, a feisty middle-aged ballet dancer, trolls romance scammers online and eventually connects with a Nigerian man named Benu. Juno's obsessions with aging, death, and her body have crippled her personality. With her career waning and most of her time spent caring for her ailing husband Jupiter, she yearns for meaning. Yet she is depressed, full of unexamined anger and guilt. Through her scathing lens, she sees decay and deception everywhere. Unable to sleep, she baits love scammers into conversation. "Go ahead and write to women who are dumb enough to fall for that," she thinks. "The main thing is that I have a counterpart."
Unclear Intentions
But it remains unclear what Juno aims to achieve with her long, confusing responses. She does not toy with the scammers, entangle them in her own web, or waste their time. There is no playfulness, despite her claims to want it. Nor is there genuine conversation, only baffling rants about her own issues. The men leave, and Juno feels she has been clever.
Eventually, she meets Benu from Nigeria, also known as Owen_Wilson223. This friendship, framed as the heart of the story, never approaches intimacy or interest because Juno is not genuinely curious about much beyond her aging body and the film Melancholia, which Hefter burdens with excessive symbolic weight.
Overwritten and Underfelt
I wish Hefter had taken more time to untangle Juno from her source material. Because her characters have yet to fully bloom in her imagination, revealing layers, contradictions, and subtext, she spells out much that should remain unsaid. For instance, we are told: "It was possible that she was the real Juno in these chats." Or: "Juno asked herself whether the tattoos served a purpose for her, whether they were a substitute for something else."
In her night-time chats with Benu, Juno touches on poetry, dancing, income inequality, food insecurity, and Nigeria, but never moves beyond surface-level interrogation. Despite her many books on Nigeria, she cannot see Benu as anything more than a conman. When he shares his future plans, her paranoia takes over: he must be running a long con and will soon need capital.
Missed Opportunities
This doomed dynamic, if allowed to develop, could have lent nuance to Juno's character, who is clearly devoted to Jupiter and whose life is full of interesting power imbalances. Instead, Hefter lets this opportunity slip away, continually gesturing toward Juno's aging body, Jupiter's impending death, and all our deaths. In the final four pages, Juno's internal change is spelled out: life is about the rehearsals, not the stage; she could have been Benu's friend; the melancholia is gone. Yet it all feels overwritten and underfelt.
Translation Issues?
Is there a subtext that has not carried over into translation? Am I reading a sharp critique of an oblivious white woman whose distrust and self-loathing blind her to real friendship, simply because unequal financial circumstances might mean she has to pay some money? In the end, I do not believe that. Because despite all we know about Juno's life and surface thoughts, we get no sense of her singular nature—or Benu's. And because I, a lover of despicable characters and a middle-aged woman who shares all of Juno's obsessions, was bored. Like Benu on the final page, I have already forgotten her.
Dina Nayeri is the author of A Happy Death, forthcoming in 2027. Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? by Martina Hefter, translated by Linda Gaus, is published by Fig Tree (£14.99).
