The Light Between Our Fingers
The first novel for adults by one of the Netherlands' most celebrated children's authors
In Het licht tussen onze vingers, Benny Lindelauf delivers an original and frank account of fatherhood, grief and the silence that can creep into a marriage after an unforgettable loss.
Martijn Prins
Five years after his son disappeared in the Swiss Alps, driving instructor Walter Bronoet seems to have his life back on track, until a near-accident forces him off the road. Without telling his wife, he spends his days at a stork shelter, where a troubled teenager drags him to his first ever rave.
The title comes from a memory of a holiday in Sweden: his thirteen-year-old son on a pier, catching the light of the setting sun between his fingers. Walter is sure the boy wanted to tell him something that evening, but he didn't let him. Only when he finds a gay dating app on his son's phone does he begin to understand what it might have been.
His wife learns to let go of their son, and eventually of him. Their neighbourhood is demolished to make way for new housing. But Walter keeps searching for the son he never really knew. With a cinematic eye and a gift for finding humour in the tragic, the novel explores fatherhood, guilt and the silences that grow within a family.
Lindelauf appeals to the reader’s imagination, and once the reader has engaged it, they become part of the story and there is no turning back. Like Walter, they find themselves caught among the branches, hoping against hope for a miracle.
Tzum
A tender, unsettling portrait of a man who holds on to the light – even after everyone else has stopped looking for it
Reminiscent of Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove
