ralentina reviewed De avond is ongemak by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
As dark as it gets
4 stars
I'm proud to have read this in Dutch, but the result is that I constantly questioned whether I was understanding it right.
In a rural village in the Dutch bible-belt, a boy dies whilst skating on the pond. His sister, Jas, resentful at being left behind and scared her dad may kill her pet rabbit for the Christmas meal, had asked God to take Mathijs instead, and becomes convinced her prayers have been heeded to. This all happens in the first 20 pages or so. In the remaining 250, Jas and her family are left navigating the grief of this loss, a task that slowly destroys them. Death is everywhere, even more so after the village's cows are slaughtered in response to the BSE epidemic.
The book is told from Jas' perspective, i.e. a twelve-year old educated in a strict religious environment. The other main characters are her siblings, Hanna …
I'm proud to have read this in Dutch, but the result is that I constantly questioned whether I was understanding it right.
In a rural village in the Dutch bible-belt, a boy dies whilst skating on the pond. His sister, Jas, resentful at being left behind and scared her dad may kill her pet rabbit for the Christmas meal, had asked God to take Mathijs instead, and becomes convinced her prayers have been heeded to. This all happens in the first 20 pages or so. In the remaining 250, Jas and her family are left navigating the grief of this loss, a task that slowly destroys them. Death is everywhere, even more so after the village's cows are slaughtered in response to the BSE epidemic.
The book is told from Jas' perspective, i.e. a twelve-year old educated in a strict religious environment. The other main characters are her siblings, Hanna and Obbe. Very believably, these kids are naive and well-meaning, victims of the situation, desperate for some signs of affection, especially from their increasingly neglectful parents. They are, also cruel and sadistic. They experience remorse and guilt but, having always conceived of themselves as sinners, there is no relation between the intensity of these feelings and the weight of their actions.
Sex and death are taboo topics in this religious households (even mentioning Mathijs' name is forbidden), but at the same time they're everyday, matter-of-fact occurrences when it comes to the farm animals: cows must be inseminated, chickens are killed, rabbits mate. Indeed, the adults also seem to look at the children's bodies as animals, too: pushing soap up their butts against constipation, commenting on their developments as if they were cattle.
As the book proceeds, the level of darkness, brutality and goriness increases. One could talk of a crescendo, if it wasn't that suicidal thoughts, animal torture and sexual violence come to dominate the second half of the book to the point that there is nowhere to go from there. It is relentless.
