Of Superbroads, Rented Men, and Champagne Diets 41
immediately for tax purposes. While Lauro is styling her tresses, she confides
her mission to an older woman who happens to be sitting in the next chair. This
woman (who returns later as her confidant, Alma Mater) recommends her son,
Dr. Enno Winkel, “the best divorce lawyer in the city,” (10)17 who also happens
to dabble in tax breaks, finance, and real estate (13). Franziska runs right over to
this jack-of-all-trades and by way of masterful miscommunication and double
speak manages to obtain a divorce instead of a house. By the time she realizes
the mistake and the lawyer understands her original intention, she has decided
that it might not be such a bad idea after all.
After filing for divorce by mistake, she is advised by her lawyer (who soon
becomes the first in a series of lover/admirers) to write down her reasons for
wanting a divorce. These pages eventually become a book, which Alma Mater,
unbeknownst to Franziska, shows to an editor friend of hers. The book becomes
a bestseller, Franziska, now Franka, becomes more famous than her ex-husband
(who directs television movies), and with the help and guidance of her two
friends, Alma Mater and Paula—who takes care of the two children—and her
man of the moment, everyone lives happily ever after.
A Man f o r Every Tone, Lind’s 1989 first novel, is similar. Its plot centers on
a twenty-something choir-soloist who struggles to decide between two men and
her beloved singles existence. One of the men—the debonair and slightly older
music critic Georg Lalinde—seeks her out, while she meets the other—the bear
like doctor with the cool car—on a train. She vacillates between the two men for
a time, unable to decide. Depending on her mood, she accepts dates with one or
the other, giving into whatever urge she has at the moment. In general, when she
is with the one, she longs for the other. If she is in a trendy restaurant with the
doctor, she dreams of the critic and wishes she were with him, sitting in her
kitchen “eating mushy noodle casserole” (65).18 However, when the music critic
proposes, she says no, she is still waiting for the man of her dreams (242). Her
choice of “waiting” instead of “searching” or even “finding” reflects the
passivity of Lind’s characters when it comes to their fates. When she finally
becomes pregnant (also by mistake), she also waits for the father of her child to
come to her. He finds an apartment, furnishes it, and trades the cool car in for a
station wagon—a “gray family Opel, a kind of station wagon, roomy and not
especially streamlined”19—with a baby seat (287).
The plots of Lind’s other novels The Magic Woman, The Nest o f Broads,
The Rented Man, and The Champagne Diet continue in this way, as the
“Superweiber” age gracefully with their author.20 The image of the “Superweib”
or “Zauberfrau” however, disintegrates fairly quickly if you are paying attention.
The strength and indomitable will of Lind’s protagonists is illusory, and the
“Superweiber” rarely achieve anything as the result of their own efforts,
preferring rather to rely on happenstance. Lind agrees in the Ohland interview,
saying at least of her earlier (pre-Nest o f Broads) protagonists, “the heroines
[stumbled] unwittingly to some successes or other, had numerous lovers, and
everything was very easy” (28).21