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His second collection of poetry, Fantoommerrie (Phantomare), was published in 2019 and won the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize. Rijneveld’s debut novel The Discomfort of Evening (2018) garnered exceptional praise and went on to sell more than 160,000 copies. It was awarded the International Booker Prize 2020. Translations are due to appear in 37 countries.

Lucas Rijneveld

Jas is mourning her dead brother, who drowned while skating. She is in the no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood, and it is through her eyes that we see how the other members of her family deal with the loss. Jas feels totally misunderstood, she invokes her brother through strange rituals, she abandons herself to compulsive erotic games, she sees her parents as threatening, she resorts to torturing animals, she fantasises about God, she dreams of ‘the other side’ and of redemption. In short, the novel is about her vain attempt to be rescued.We are not permitted to regard the intense adolescent Jas from a distance, as if observing some pathological case. No, we are deeply involved with her and we shudder. The novel is bursting with apt, sharp, gruesome, and sometimes funny images. Rijneveld lays everything bare.Thank goodness for those funny images which give some relief and allow us to laugh! Broccoli florets are mini-Christmas trees, Jas’ mother’s withered breasts are like the collection bags in church. Rijneveld has written a daringly depressing novel, which can lead to sombre, self-pitying reflection. But what powerful writing, what a hunger for images, what a courageous writer.<ul><li>International Booker Prize 2020</li></ul>

The deluge of images that Rijneveld unleashes on us is original, witty, sombre and necessary. This is how the story must be told, and in no other way… [the ending] hit me in the chest like a straight left. It goes on reverberating there.

It’s a story that’s told in a child’s voice, which is a very difficult thing to write, but it’s a voice that’s constantly searching for the words in which to express things. And through these words, we as adult readers really get the feeling of that very particular mixture of innocence, sharpness of pain, sharpness of disappointment that are in the child at the time when she is trying to tell the story.

Book

Fiction

De avond is ongemak

In this fine debut novel, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld forces us to look at exactly what is seen, felt and tasted, not from a distancing helicopter perspective, but from close up, breathtakingly close up. 'The Discomfort of Evening' takes the reader into an oppressive and repulsive world where detail is what matters.

The Discomfort of Evening

Only twenty-nine years old, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a preternaturally gifted writer. They added ‘Lucas’ to their name to reflect their non-binary gender identity. Both their poetry and prose have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, with the highlight being the 2020 International Booker Prize for The Discomfort of Evening, Michele Hutchison’s English translation of Rijneveld’s debut novel.Their second novel grabs hold of the reader from the opening line. My Heavenly Favourite is one, dark, churning current of language, with chapters without a single line break and meandering sentences that run on for a page and a half. Rijneveld seamlessly moves between different registers. The story is filled with references to Dutch luminaries such as Gerard Reve and Jan Wolkers, but also alludes to the magical lyrics of Kurt Cobain and Kate Bush, Nabokov’s Lolita and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which Rijneveld read in secret growing up in a very religious family, copying out the first volume in its entirety by hand.My Heavenly Favourite’s great strength is its narrative perspective. The story is told by the livestock veterinarian, ‘the child molester’ who, in his yearning for innocence and purity, grows obsessed with the tomboy with the wheat-blonde hair and the pitch-black imagination. He creeps inexorably into her imagination, her language, her mind and her body. In the very first sentence, the veterinarian warns us that he should have ‘taken a paring knife and incised [her] like a sore in a claw horn’. But he doesn’t.

Authentic, inescapable, dirty, lyrical.

This novel is a celebration of language. […] It is its swirling, obsessive, lyrical style that makes the book soar.

Mijn lieve gunsteling

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s second novel tells the story of a forbidden love. An aging livestock veterinarian and a fourteen-year-old girl with a vivid imagination engage in a macabre dance as they explore their identity and sexuality. The novel is gruesome, intense and makes for deeply uncomfortable reading, but it is also moving, captivating, addictive – unputdownable.

My Heavenly Favourite

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