Original title: Katka už nebude divná
Genre: novel
Publisher:
Host, 2025
ISBN: 978-80-275-2776-2
Pages: 224
An authentic coming-of-age story about finding one's own identity and the journey to self-acceptance
Almost fifteen-year-old Katka spends most of her time alone—and she loves reading. She also loves eating. Her classmates consider her a bit of an oddball. But Katka is sure that everything will be different at high school, and right after the entrance exams, she makes a resolution: she'll lose weight.
At first, it’s just an effort to adopt a healthier lifestyle but it slowly becomes apparent that the path to the “new me” she dreams of isn’t as simple as she imagined. Her desire for change begins to spiral out of control. High school does change everything—but in ways she didn’t expect.
This is an authentic coming-of-age story about adolescence, the search for identity and the journey toward self-acceptance. While anorexia plays a major role in Katka’s story, the heart of the novel—true to Petra Soukupová’s style—is the exploration of human relationships.
“I’m fat, I spend all my time reading, and I have no friends. But everything will change once I get to high school. First, I’ll lose weight. I won’t read all the time anymore. And I’ll make a friend. I won’t be weird anymore.”
"Petra Soukupová has written a psychological novel about adolescence. About the most brutal age, when a child doesn’t even have time to say goodbye to childhood – and is already standing firm as an adult.
She wrote it with frightening precision, understanding, and plausibility. Cinematically, like a screenplay. Dynamically and packed with action. As if she had got right into her protagonist’s head, looked through her eyes, and read the changing world around her through her emotions, her thoughts. As if she felt and understood alongside her. As if she knew her. Like her best friend.
This book works both all the way and at the finishing line. It is great literature – and at the same time a pick-me-up. When someone feels a bit out of it, out of the game. When they feel weird. And maybe not just at fifteen around their school-leaving exams... "
Radim Kopáč, MF Dnes
"Petra Soukupová's latest novel, Katka Won't Be Weird Anymore shows various aspects of the onset and development of anorexia from the narrator’s perspective. The insidious beginnings, when the protagonist’s isolation caused by otherness and shame leads her to try to deal with everything on her own and look for seemingly easier ways to achieve results. The deepening of this isolation caused by the distrust of those around her, which initially encouraged her to lose weight, then discourages her from doing so. This exposes the despair of the chief protagonist, who sees no way out of this isolation, considering the entire world around her (which is constantly pushing its ideal of beauty on her) as the enemy. The story flows naturally and non-didactically both in the book and in the audiobook, where director Martina Frejová Krátká and narrator Aneta Kalertová skilfully utilize Petra Soukupová’s ability to write in a seemingly authentic flow of speech or stream of consciousness, whether it’s an adult, a child, or an adolescent that is speaking."
Šárka Jančíková, Český rozhlas Vltava
