Ilona Hartmann | JUNK

She’s got seven days. Seven days between a troubling diagnosis and the follow-up appointment that could change everything. Seven days to stop thinking – or to finally put things in order. Rather than getting distracted, she heads down to her basement, armed with a head torch, muesli bars and a firm resolve to get rid of everything she no longer needs. But amidst removal boxes and boxes of mementos, oversized teddy bears and 20-year-old toothbrushes, an unexpected journey begins: through chaos and order, consumption and identity, through the history of her possessions and a meditation on junk. 

“Junk” is a novel about a young woman who clears out her cellar and, in the process, discovers what really matters in life. It’s Ilona Hartmann’s third novel, and the one that also just happens to land her a new literary genre of her own: happysad.