Lead review
- Book: The Discomfort of Evening
- Location: Netherlands
- Author: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
One of the titles chosen for Boekenweek UK 2020
Matthies goes skating on a cold Winter’s day near to Christmas. His younger sister, Jas, the narrator of this novel, asks to go with him but is refused. In a fit of pique and fearing that her pet rabbit is destined for the pot for Christmas, Jas prays that God might take her brother and spare the rabbit. When Matthies falls through the ice and cannot be revived, Jas is overcome with grief and guilt and begins to experience horrific thoughts and fantasies that somehow merge with her real life. She refuses to take off her increasingly smelly and revolting red coat, despite the cruel comments of her classmates, she sticks a drawing pin into her belly button and hides this from everyone and she develops chronic constipation. There is little in the way of support or solace for her, as her devoutly religious parents gradually fall apart following the death of their son and eventually become unable to care for their surviving three children.
Even before Matthies’ death, the parents are pious and punitive and bodily functions are a source of shame and not to be spoken about. The children are not allowed to mention their brother or his death and become obsessed by religion, sex and death as they try to make some sense of their world. Jas and Hanna begin to experiment with masturbation and play sexual games with their brother, Obbe, games that become increasingly disturbing and cruel. Obbe obsessively bangs his head on the bedpost and begins torturing and killing animals. Their mother, locked into her own grief, seems not to notice anything the children are doing. And then, to make matters worse, the horrific 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth arrives on the family’s dairy farm.
The Discomfort of Evening was a prizewinner and bestseller in the Netherlands and it was chosen for as a Boekenweek selection in the UK; it is undoubtedly successful in its exploration of a family falling apart following tragedy, but, as it progresses, the novel tends to lose its narrative thread and reads more as a series of episodes. It could be that Rijneveld has deliberately done this, intending to convey the increasingly disturbed mind of Jas, but it has to be said that it reads as if the writer is positively relishing the detailed description of disturbing events. There are scenes that will unfortunately remain in the mind long after the book is closed – like the description of Jas’ father shoving soap up her bum to help her poo, or the account of a horrific sexual violation that seems to go unpunished. The writer seems, at times, to be completely fixated on scatological detail. It has to be said that discomfort is a very mild term for the feelings this novel produces.
Despite all this, The Discomfort of Evening is a strong debut novel. Rijneveld’s prose is beautiful, almost poetic at times. Her imagery is vivid and powerful and her portrayal of a family in crisis is masterful.
Please wait...
