Meike's Reviews > The Discomfort of Evening

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2020
In this grim, claustrophobic novel, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld masterfully evokes an increasing sense of doom - on this Dutch farm, the apocalypse is nearing. Our narrator and main character is 10-year-old Jas who grows up in a strict religious family who owns a dairy farm. When she detects signs that her father might slaughter her favorite rabbit, she begs God to take her older brother instead - the plea of a child momentarily upset by her sibling. But then, the brother really drowns, the parents are paralyzed by grief, their marriage is under duress, the mother gets depressed, the farm is (also due to circumstances beyond their agency) in decline, and Jas and her two remaining siblings are more or less left to their own devices and their inability to deal with the loss of the brother.

The story gradually becomes more and more graphic and frequently rather disgusting (which is of course intentional): From the harsh reality of stock rearing to children torturing and killing animals, children being molested, harming themselves and others and experimenting with their developing sexuality, this novel is not for the faint of heart. The pastor in the novel says: "Discomfort is good. In discomfort we are real.", and Rijneveld tests this theory on their readers.

The parents hold on to their religion to explain and make sense of their experiences, to deal with reality, and the children also cling to narrative frameworks when seeking direction: For them, religion is also an important frame of reference, but Jas also invokes Anne Frank, she contemplates what she might have in common with Hitler (Jas, just like the author, has the same date of birth as the dictator), she plays mind games about Jews hiding in their cellar, she obsesses over the fairy tale of Rapunzel, and she relates to TV star Dieuwertje Blok. Again and again, we hear about dangling ropes on the compound, and we get lots and lots of info on Jas' constipation. Lego bricks and The Sims are recurring motifs, games that focus on building new worlds, and Jas dreams of leaving the farm (which, in a way, her brother has done...). Jas' coat (which features prominently on the cover) becomes her armor, and she doesn't take it off anymore.

Rijneveld grew up in a reformed farming family in North Brabant and still does some work on a dairy farm. Their own 12-year-old brother was run over by a bus when they were a young child, so this book can probably be read as a roman à clef about the author, a fictional autobiography. You can learn more about this fascinating, talented Dutch writer here and here.

I can see why this novel is lauded, but I have to admit that for me, reading it turned into a chore after around 15%. The book finds intense, unsettling images to discuss grief, trauma and the dark urges of adolescence, but personally, I didn't find it emotionally immersive, but rather exhausting to read. The vibe of the book and especially the shocking ending reminded me of another debut originally written in Dutch, Lize Spit's bestseller Het smelt - although de facto not excessively long, it felt like a very, very long book that spelt out its descriptions and motifs over and over again.

So all in all, this is a very impressive, effective novel, but it's not the kind of literature I personally enjoy.

(The book is also available in German: Was man sät)