Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
Jas, 10, lives on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are considered to be sins by her deeply religious parents and brothers. Jas has a special way of viewing the world, despite their mundane daily routine: her face is soft like cheese in her mother’s hands; the village’s migrating toads have green warts that feel like capers; and “blush phrases” that aren’t included in the Bible sound like this.
Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
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The orderly regularity of her family’s existence is disrupted by a horrible tragedy one chilly morning, and Jas is certain she is to blame. Jas and her siblings grow more interested in death as their parents’ suffering causes them to grow distant, which causes them to engage in strange rituals and fantasies. Jas, who is huddled in her red winter coat, daydreams about “the other side” and salvation without knowing where her final daydreaming will take her.
The Discomfort of Evening, a revolutionary debut book by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld that has become a national blockbuster in the Netherlands, gives readers a unique perspective on rural and religious life there. In it, they pose the question: In the absence of solace and tenderness, what defences may a child’s mind devise for itself? What transpires if that is insufficient? Rijneveld has crafted an enthralling language universe unmatched in its psychological precision and imagery of eerie, terrible beauty.
In “The Discomfort of Evening,” a young Dutch girl begs God to take her elder brother because she is upset with him for leaving her out. We witness everyone in this farming family attempting to digest the fact that the boy never returns after his lone ice skating trip. The following days are filled with the ambiguity and disorientation you would anticipate from a 10-year-old narrator, but with a considerably darker undertone. To get through our narrator’s experimenting and early introduction to highly adult actions, it would assist if you had a strong stomach. She shared some strange experiences with a teddy bear and a hamster with her brother. Nobody would blame someone for not being able to endure hearing such stories concerning prepubescent children. Even with a childish love of toilet humour, author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld manages to give her protagonist an intelligent voice.
Most people would lose interest in the heroine if she violated these social norms, but we learn enough to understand why Jas doesn’t receive enough instruction. She was familiar with some religious verses, but not enough to properly kiss her sister. (Wow, reading that bit made me uncomfortable.) When you observe her parents’ unhappy marriage and Jas’s lack of healthy outlets from the poisonous environment, you could experience extreme claustrophobia.
