The Discomfort Of Evening

I thought about being too small for so much, but that no one told you when you were big enough ... and I asked God if he please couldn't take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit. 'Amen.'

The Discomfort Of Evening, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's debut novel, won the International Booker Prize 2020. It is the story of Jas, a young girl living with her religious family on a dairy farm in the rural Netherlands. Jas, fearful that her father will slaughter her pet rabbit, asks God to take her older brother, Matties, instead. Matties is going skating on the river and she is not allowed to go so Jas is jealous. He drowns when he falls through the ice and Jas blames herself. The loss leaves the family reeling. The mother becomes depressed, stops eating, withdraws from her remaining children and shows signs of suicidal ideation. The father, always a strict and angry man, now has the added strain of dealing with an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease among his cattle. The three children have to navigate a very bleak world without parental guidance and deal with their grief and their fear of death in maladaptive ways. Jas wears a red coat that serves as a protective coat of armour that she never removes. She wets the bed; she is chronically constipated. Her bloated stomach is a symbol of the pain she keeps contained in an attempt to hold some control over her life. Obbe, the surly remaining brother, kills things and bangs his head against the bed. Younger sister, Hanna, is as lost and confused as the rest of her family. All three children are curious about sex which they are not allowed to talk about and express this curiosity in aberrant ways. The imagery is nauseatingly effective. The novel is suffused with the stench of decay. It smells like mould on stale buns, like Jas's urine soaked underwear, like manure and boiling cow udders. I was seriously tempted to put the book aside but kept reading (in small bites), hoping that something would happen to lift the grief of this family and turn it around but that didn't happen. 

It is graphic, it is discomfiting, it is brutal. I wish I hadn't read it. For that reason, I cannot recommend this book.