Discomfort of Evening

“The Discomfort of Evening” by Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, has got to be the most scatological novel ever to win the International Booker Prize. If an entire novel about poo (yes, I get it’s symbolic, thanks) is what you’re in the mood for, then this is the book for you.And trust me, there are WAY WORSE scenes in the book than the poo obsession; disturbing and grotesque scenes of animal and human abuses. AND even then it’s mostly monotonous. I can only guess that it won the Booker for its shock value.

“The Discomfort of Evening” has a very dark premise: a young Dutch girl, angry at her older brother for excluding her, asks God to take him. The boy never returns from his solo ice skating trip, and we see everyone in this farming clan trying to process it. The subsequent days contain the uncertainty and confusion that you would expect from a 10-year-old narrator but with a much darker element to it. It would help if you had a strong stomach to get through our narrator’s experimentation and premature exposure to very adult activities. She and her brother both had curious adventures with a teddy bear and a hamster. No one would fault an individual who could not handle hearing such tales about prepubescent youth. Still, you have to admire how author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld gives her protagonist an eloquent voice despite a juvenile love of toilet humor. Breaking these social mores would cause most people to lose interest in the heroine, but we receive enough to know why Jas lacks the correct amount of guidance. She knew her bible verses but not enough to kiss her sister correctly. (Wow, was that part uncomfortable to read). You may develop a severe claustrophobia case when you see her parents’ loveless marriage and Jas’s lack of positive outlets from the toxic atmosphere. No one will ever call the theme of religiously oppressive households new. Still, Rijneveld grew up in a Reformist farming family and may have added some unique autobiographical bits to their writing. We hope that some of the experimentation stories are from her imagination, but that will freak you out in a different way. If you treat animals as property, could you, in turn, lack respect for your own body? Let me be clear: the author and translator both qualify as poetic wordsmiths and make sure that you care about Jas. However, most people do not want to hear about borderline incest and ten-year-old curiosity in today’s climate. You recognize the three kids as confused without guidance from their role models other than perverted Biblical messages. In a way, it makes the occasional sweet moments more rewarding.

I preordered this book in anticipation of a spectacular read by an emerging new literary voice. While the author writes in a lyrical style, the content of their book is disturbing. Specifically, they normalize and explicitly describe sexual abuse of children. My copy is on its way back to the warehouse.

Shockingly vivid, confronting, transgressive, and brilliantly unique. The translation is an absolute tour de force. THE best debut novel I have ever read - about childhood, grief and what it means to be a sentient human being. Transcendent, unfiltered. You won't read a better book this year or for many years to come. If I could give it ten stars I would. Mark Henshaw, author of The Snow Kimono

In August, the Dutch poet and novelist, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize for this disturbing and unsettling novel. Ten year old Jas resides in a very closed Reformist community which uses biblical passages and a sinister merciless God whose authority guides the family's life. However, when her older brother is killed in an ice skating accident, the household's world comes apart. Parents severely withdraw into their own world, no one articulates their heartache and the children grapple with grief and loss of religious faith. They act out with perverse diabolical sexual experimentation with themselves, friends and animals. Jas and her family thoroughly withdraws into their own shells as they are not able to vocalize their inner feelings. Jas has magical thinking where she keeps toads in her protective coat, hoping they will mate and magically turn her parents into lovers. Although this all sounds gory, I deeply loved this book. Other people may find it "disgusting or too graphic. But, in my opinion, with such an honest vision, it points to the innocence of a child and magical thinking that envelope a child's brain when catastrophe punches a family. Anyone who wants an understanding of real grief will be gripped physically by the torture of it all. I underlined 103 passages that were written with fresh, forceful and profound statements. Meanwhile it also made me smile at some of the childlike observations that whirled in her head. The ending is a total whiplash but was in keeping with the theme of the book and thoroughly created a punch in the gut. Marieke certainly deserves the award for writing a novel about a child's deep innocence and a deleterious environment that can destroys children's lives.

I could talk in detail about “The Discomfort of Evening” (2020) by the Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (who is referred to as "they"). About why I think this difficult book was nominated for this year's International Booker Prize, about why I find this semi-autobiography incredibly repulsive, and why the cover of this (British) edition is just spot on.⠀The novel is less than three hundred pages, but it contains an incredible amount of things: the death of a close relative (which, as it turns out, could have been prevented), the depressing atmosphere of a small Dutch village, where the most important thing is to polish your shoes before Sunday's visit to the reformist church, the all-consuming depression, hopelessness and loneliness of people (adults and children alike), which children try to eradicate being cruel to animals and their peers.⠀What's the point of the book? To show us readers what grief could look like and how one family can disintegrate? What kind of emotions are we supposed to experience? Revolt and depression? Any joy? Not at all. Ah wait, the ending was unexpectedly profound.⠀As a therapeutic exercise for the author who writes about her childhood, I understand and accept "The Discomfort of Evening”. But as a reader, I would not be recommending this book to my fellow bibliophiles. I can describe this book as a true "study of grief". Maybe at some level it is beautiful. For me it was a torment.

Yes this is, almost, a beautifully written book, I say almost because it’s incredibly depressing. Not beautifully melancholy how some books can be, not even the harsh stories of how low humans can go in their behaviour. This is disturbingly depressing. I have not enjoyed a single moment of reading it. Is the sexuality between siblings abuse? I don’t know I’m on only child. I couldn’t imagine this is the norm. The unnecessary cruelty to animals doesn’t really serve a purpose in the story, it’s just more horror I had to skim over. I am perhaps not enlightened enough but I just don’t grasp this novel’s purpose. I’m glad it’s over, I’m glad I can crawl out of this dark place it’s left me in. Obviously some people have enjoyed this book, luckily we are all different. There’s no single moment of beauty here...

I have really tried to persevere with this book based on all the praise I've seen for it. I just can't. I've had to give up. I can't take anymore scenes of young siblings sexually experimenting/abusing each other.The prose really isn't all that, it's just a disturbing account of a dreary miserable life punctuated with animal and sexual abuse (sometimes at the same time).

I read this book till the end ,thinking that it must be excellent to be a Booker nomination.I can certainly understand the devastation that must be engendered in a family with the death of a beloved son/brother. However, any lightness or humour was extinguished very early on with the death of Matthies.I really loathed this book.I thought there was far too much graphic detail about various bodily functions and abuses. The end was unexpected and shocking.I could not recommend it.

I had to recover for a while after reading this book. It was so bold and its imagery almost savage in its painful portrayal of a family unravelled by grief and loss of mutual care. I must applaud the courage of the author to bring their story to the page with such honesty and without embellishing anything about their perspective growing up.'Does it still hurt? It might sound crazy, but I miss my parents even though I see them every day. Maybe it's just like the things we want to learn because we can't do them yet: we miss everything we don't have. Mum and Dad are there, but at the same time they aren't.'The main protagonist is lost in her own grief, watching helplessly as her parents are unable to find solace in each others company, worse unable to care emotionally and physically for their children after a tragic accident takes their eldest son.'As I walk away, I leave a trail behind in the snow. My hope that someone will find me is growing steadily. Someone to help me find myself and to say: cold, lukewarm, warm, getting warmer, hot.'The words of the author often made my skin crawl, my heart ache and I sometimes had to put the book down to breathe because it was simply too difficult to continue without a rest.'Once a year we have chicks, little yellow candyflosses on legs.'The author's imagery is stunning (albeit often painful to read) and in itself made this read worth my while. Highly recommended but beware of the themes of abuse, it's not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination.