The Discomfort of Evening

Winner of The 2020 International Booker Prize

Is this a brilliant novel, or is it too disgusting and discomforting that I couldn’t rate it over one or two stars? That was, for me, the main question before I could write a proper review. And in one way, it was both.

Even though it will feel uncomfortable for a while, but according to the pastor, discomfort is good. In discomfort we are real.

The Discomfort Of Evening is a story of a twelve-year-old Jas. Her brother dies in a skating accident, and this novel deals with her mourning.

And yes, as the title says, there are discomforts here. There are things written that I didn’t want to read. Like literally. But if I look at this novel from another perspective, this is, without a doubt, a unique and thorough look at the mourning of a child, mourning, with no support or explanation from the adults. All she has are some frightening passages from the Bible.

We find ourselves in loss and we are who we are – vulnerable beings, like stripped starling chicks that fall naked from their nests and hope they’ll be picked up again.

There are a lot of content warnings, and you can often feel discomfort when reading this novel. At some points, I couldn’t decide if it was too much. And if I should continue reading. But now I’m glad I did, that I finished this novel. Not everything was to my taste and expectations. But I would gladly read something else from this author, and I hope it would be something less discomforting.

In the end I settled for a 3.5 rounded to 4 stars because the book stayed in my mind.

Goodreads

Details:

• author: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
  
• full title: The Discomfort of Evening
• country: Netherlands
  
• genre: literary fiction
• format/type: bookfiction
• topics: #comingofage, #mourning, #family
  
• publisher: Faber & Faber
  
• publish date: 05.03.2020
  
• pages: 282
  

Literary Prizes:

• Libris Literatuurprijs Nominee (2019), 
• International Booker Prize (2020), 
• Metų verstinė knyga Nominee for Fiction (2021)

My Rating of the Book:

• content: 💙💙💙💙

  

Excerpt from the Book:

About the Author:

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld grew up in a Reformed farming family in North Brabant (NL) before moving to Utrecht. One of the greatest new voices in Dutch literature, his first poetry collection, Calfskin, was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize for best poetry debut in 2015, with newspaper de Volkskrant naming him literary talent of the year. In 2018, Atlas Contact published his first novel, The Discomfort of Evening, which won the prestigious ANV Debut Prize and was a national bestseller. Alongside his writing career, Rijneveld works on a dairy farm.