My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld review – a transgressive tour de force
In this dazzling follow-up to the International Booker-winning The Discomfort of Evening, an abuser addresses his teenage victim
Sandra Newman
31 January 2024
My Heavenly Favourite, the second novel from acclaimed Dutch author Lucas Rijneveld, belongs to a tiny, controversial subgenre: novels about child sex abuse rendered in exquisite prose. It is all the more transgressive in that it’s narrated by the abuser, who addresses his victim in an incantatory, unflinchingly graphic second-person rant about his eternal love. Such a book has to clear a very high bar not to seem like a cynical exercise. Rijneveld’s novel leaps effortlessly over, with room to spare.
The thing I get complimented on the most is the rhythm and flow of my translations, never their accuracy!
Michele Hutchison recently quipped on Twitter that she posts annual reminders on social media about the correct spelling of her name because “no one ever gets it right.” Yet, for the talented Dutch to English translator, 2020 is already shaping up to be the year that this all changes. In recent weeks, Hutchison was awarded the prestigious Vondel Prize for her “sure-footed, propulsive” translation of Sander Kollaard’s Stage Four, and her translation of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s explosive debut novel, The Discomfort of Evening, was longlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Amsterdam-based Hutchison has translated over thirty-five books, co-written a book on the benefits of Dutch-style parenting, and is an active and generous member of the European literary translation community. Several years ago, Michele also read and thoughtfully critiqued my own translations of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s poetry. Following the announcement of the International Booker longlist, I was eager to reignite our conversation on Rijneveld’s work, and learn more about her prize-winning translation of Kollaard’s extraordinary novel.
—Sarah Timmer Harvey, March 2020
Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): Congratulations on winning the Vondel Prize for your translation of Stage Four. What does winning the prize mean to you?
Michele Hutchison (MH): Thanks! If you look at the translators who have won in the past, it sets me in very good company and it’s a great honour. I found it very hard to believe I’d actually won the prize because I’ve always felt insecure about my translations, and I fixate on the flaws; it’s impossible to get everything right. But I suppose every translator struggles with producing an imperfect product. Mind you, I’ve noticed that the leading male translators in my field have less trouble with that, and feel they deserve prizes for all their hard work, so perhaps it’s a female thing?
I co-wrote a non-fiction book (The Happiest Kids in the World) and I actually found that less stressful. I was able to let go of some of my perfectionism because I wasn’t about to mess up someone else’s book like with a translation. What I also think about prizes is that the choice of the winner depends on the mood of the jury on the day. It’s not like the best book always wins, or that there is even objectively a “best” book or translation. To be honest, my money was on the runner-up, David Doherty. I guess my writerly touch was probably what clinched it in the end, if anything!
Descent into darkness … Lollum, The Netherlands. Photograph: Frans Lemmens
BOOK OF THE DAY
2020 / Books of the year
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld review – a family’s grief
Tragedy shapes the darkly ritualistic world of three children in a Reformed farming family, in this bestseller from the Netherlands
Theodora Danek Fri 20 Mar 2020 07.30 GMT
Last modified on Thu 2 Apr 2020 14.49 BST
O
n a cold winter day in the rural Netherlands, a boy goes ice skating on the local pond. His sister Jas, who had asked to come along, is resentful at being excluded. Fearing that her father might serve up her pet rabbit as a Christmas meal, she prays that God might take Matthies instead. When her brother falls through the ice, her impulsive wish comes true. Grief and trauma begin to tear the fabric of Jas’s deeply religious farming family apart.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
From that day on, three forces shape Jas’s world: death, sex and religion. Grief rules the house where Matthies’s name must no longer even be mentioned. As the parents prove incapable of taking care of their remaining three children, the siblings’ fear of and curiosity about death leads them into spirals of magical thinking that involve rituals and sacrifices of increasing violence. Raised in a strict Reformed household, Jas perceives the world through scripture, which she quotes frequently. Her father quizzes his children about the Bible and beats Jas’s brother for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Her mother’s favourite day is Sunday, a day ruled by the “bare essentials” – “the love of God’s word and Mom’s vegetable soup”. The rules Jas and her siblings invent for themselves join the many rules their parents and church already impose on them.This is the era of playing Snake on Nokia phones and The Sims on the family computer, a last generation of teenagers without frequent access to the internet. Caught in the no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood, Jas and her younger sister Hanna experiment with masturbation without recognising what it is, while the sexual games they play with their older brother Obbe become increasingly disturbing, as cruel as the animal sacrifices he asks Jas to make. The children’s ignorance of their own changing desires is unsurprising in a family environment shaped by the twin forces of belonging to an orthodox church and keeping livestock: bodies are there to be useful, to mate and (re)produce. Jas’s ongoing constipation is addressed by sticking soap up her bum – the same treatment that is handed out to calves. The vet, a frequent visitor, tells Jas she is almost “complete”; her father asks her how her breasts are developing, hidden under the red jacket she hasn’t taken off since her brother’s death. This protective layer has now become a part of her identity – “jas” means “jacket” in Dutch.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld tells the story from Jas’s perspective, in the first person and the present tense. This presents a riddle to the reader: the knowingness of the author sits in contrast to the narrator, who is 12 years old by the end of the book. The text is peppered with rhetorical questions (“Are Mum and Dad the pests that keep eating away at us?”) and similes. “We’re as empty as the Queen Beatrix biscuit tin on the breakfast table we once won on the Postcode Lottery: no one can fill us up,” Jas points out in a moment of characteristic self-contemplation. Everything is filtered through her eyes, a child who believes that her mother is hiding Jewish people in the basement and that killing an animal will save her family. Yet this is also a narrator who is curiously observant of other people. About her father, she remarks that he “stacks his worries like the sticks of kindling: they blaze up in our feverish minds”. Much here is told, not shown, the conclusions spelt out for the reader in metaphors and similes.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
Rijneveld, whose pronouns are they/them, is also a lauded poet whose debut collection Kalfsvlies (Calf’s Caul) covers similar themes. Rijneveld shares some biographical reference points with their characters, having also grown up in a Reformed farming family and lost an older brother as a child. Now longlisted for the Booker International prize, The Discomfort of Evening was a bestseller and prizewinner in the Netherlands, hailed as a brilliant achievement by a major new talent. In the English translation, the choice to break up longer Dutch sentences into shorter fragments, often by inserting semicolons and colons, subtly changes the tone of the novel, tempering the urgency of Jas’s breathless, slightly dreamy monologue. Translator Michele Hutchison deftly switches between registers and gives Jas a strong, unique voice.
Ultimately, the novel will find both admirers and detractors for its poetic, mannered language, realistic bleakness and descent into surreal darkness. The book doesn’t quite keep the promise of its compelling first part, where Rijneveld and Hutchison immerse us in Jas’s world with detailed observations: a dried-up raisin found under a cabinet, skin formed on warm milk. As the tragedies pile up and the narration intensifies, the fascinating characters and themes sometimes lose their immediacy amid dense prose.
• The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison, is published by Faber (RRP £12.99)
Review: 'The Discomfort of Evening,' by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison
FICTION: A 10-year-old girl tries to come to grips with her brother's death in a family of dysfunction and pain.
By Marion Winik Special to the Star Tribune SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 — 10:35AM
The Booker International Prize has gone to the youngest author ever, a 29-year-old Dutch writer named Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who uses they/them pronouns, and their translator Michele Hutchison. One judge described “The Discomfort of Evening” as “a tender and visceral evocation of a childhood caught between shame and salvation.”
One of the rising stars in contemporary Dutch literature
Sarah Timmer Harvey Wednesday 3 June 2020
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (1991) is considered one of the rising stars in contemporary Dutch literature. In 2015 Rijneveld published Kalfsvlies('Calf's Caul'), a collection of poetry which was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize for best Dutch-language poetry debut, prompting the daily newspaper de Volkskrant to proclaim her the national literary talent of the year.
Faber is delighted to announce Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s unforgettable debut novel, The Discomfort of the Evening. Former Creative Director Lee Brackstone acquired World English rights in a three-way auction from Atlas Contact in the Netherlands.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a celebrity writer in her native Netherlands. Photograph: PR
FICTION IN TRANSLATION
Ten of the best new books in translation
From a Dutch family saga to a murdered witch in Mexico, these novels will transport you from a bleak tourist town at the North Korean border to Tblisi and beyond
Marta Bauselles Saturday 23 November 2019
The Discomfort of the Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison (Faber)
By the time it hits UK shelves in March, thousands of copies of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s debut will already have been sold around Europe and beyond. A celebrity writer in her native Netherlands, the 28-year-old also works on a dairy farm, and the novel is set on one, too. Centring on a young girl whose brother dies in an ice-skating accident, it takes the reader on a haunting journey. Rijneveld is also an award-winning poet, which shows in her sensory language and the beautifully wild images that linger in the mind.
Pain by Zeruya Shalev, translated by Sondra Silverston (Other)
The Israeli writer is always incisive on the complexities of family and relationship dynamics, and her latest novel, published in the UK this month, focuses on the longing of old passions versus the dreads and comforts of domesticity. A decade after she is injured in a suicide bombing, two different kinds of pain return to Iris’s life: the physical trauma of that attack, and the love of her youth. Iris is weighed down by work and motherhood, and, as she begins an affair, Shalev plunges the reader into a whirlwind story of impossible choices.
Vernon Subutex 3 by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose)
The Vernon Subutex trilogy is “post-punk, post-morality, post-civilisation”. A satire of modern France, its protagonist, an antihero of antiheroes and a homeless guru of sorts, is the former owner of a Parisian record store, “trapped in the last century”, and on a quest to uncover the secrets of a dead pop star, his friend Alex Bleach. Books one and two are already out in the UK, and volume three will hit the shelves in 2020.
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is a writer and filmmaker. Her first novel, Baise-Moi was published in 1992 and adapted for film in 2000. She is the author of over fifteen further novels, including Apocalypse Baby (2010) and Bye Bye Blondie (2004), and the autobiographical work, King Kong Theory (2006). She won the Prix de Flore in 1998 forLes Jolies Choses, the 2010 Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse Baby and Vernon Subutex One won the Prix Anaïs Nin in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International in 2018.
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Harvill Secker)
Originally published in 1994, the translation of this masterpiece by the acclaimed Japanese author into English this year is cause for celebration. Set on an unnamed island in which all kinds of objects and beings disappear – hats, flowers, birds – inhabitants live in terror of the “Memory Police”, whose job is to keep things forgotten. A young novelist and her editor, whom she is hiding under her floorboards, are the protagonists.
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
'A masterpiece' Guardian
A compelling speculative mystery by one of Japan's greatest writers.
Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
The Memory Police is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, from one of Japan's greatest writers.
'One of Japan's most acclaimed authors explores truth, state surveillance and individual autonomy. Echoes 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and 100 Years of Solitude, but it has a voice and power all its own' Time Magazine
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Daunt Books)
This is a punchy first novel set in desolate Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. Originally written in French, the story centres on the relationship between a young French-Korean woman who works as a receptionist in an old guesthouse and a visiting French cartoonist. It was published in France in 2016 to wide acclaim, and is out here in February.
The Eighth Life (for Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe)
A phenomenon in Georgia, Germany, Poland and Holland, this Georgian saga is published in the UK this week. Spanning six generations of a family between 1900 and the 21st century, its characters travel to Tbilisi, Moscow, London and Berlin in an epic story of doomed romance that combines humour with magic realism.
Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith (Jonathan Cape)
Published in the UK in January, Bae Suah’s hypnotic novel follows one summer night and day in the life of Kim Ayami. After losing her job in Seoul, she walks the hot city all night in search of her disappeared friend in an uncannily affecting and dreamlike story of parallel lives and worlds. Translator Deborah Smith won the Man Booker International prize for Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.
A hypnotic, disorienting story of parallel lives unfolding over a day and a night in the sweltering heat of Seoul's summer
For two years, twenty-eight-year-old Kim Ayami has worked at Seoul's only audio theatre for the blind. But now the theatre is shutting down and Ayami’s future is uncertain.
Her last shift completed and the theatre closed for good, Ayami walks the streets of the city with her former boss late into the night. Together they search for a mutual friend who has disappeared. The following day, at the request of that same friend, Ayami acts as a guide for a detective novelist visiting from abroad.
But in the inescapable, all-consuming heat of Seoul at the height of the summer, order gives way to chaos, the edges of reality start to fray, and the past intrudes on the present in increasingly disruptive ways.
Blisteringly original, Untold Night and Day is a high-wire feat of storytelling that explores the possibility of worlds beyond the one we see and feel – and shows why Bae Suah is considered one of the boldest voices in Korean literature today.
‘Maike Wetzel writes with an assurance that belies her story’s unsettling menace. Elly is a tautly strung exploration of what it means when all a family desires is the continuation of their own nightmare … because the alternative is absolute despair.’
MELANIE JOOSTEN, AUTHOR OF BERLIN SYNDROME
‘Elly is mesmerising, moving, and deeply unsettling. I read it in a single, fevered session and it has haunted me since.’
EMILY MAGUIRE, AUTHOR OF AN ISOLATED INCIDENT
Elly by Maike Wetzel, translated by Lyn Marven (Scribe)
Revolving around the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl, this slender German novel builds into a brutal, uncomfortable story, told from the alternating perspectives of family members. Just as the family has started to put itself back together the girl reappears, but is so different they begin to doubt whether she’s even the same child. It won prizes in Germany and the translation is out in the UK in April.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes (Fitzcarraldo)
Set in a Mexican village, Melchor’s novel, published in the UK in February, focuses on the murder of a woman known as the Witch, whose body is found by a group of boys. This is a dazzling novel and the English-language debut of one of Mexico’s most exciting new voice.
Crossing by Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston (Pushkin)
Pajtim Statovci was born in Kosovo and raised in Finland, and his debut My Cat Yugoslavia was an imaginative novel about the refugee experience. His second book, Crossing, was published in the UK in May. It is a complex story about identity, displacement and heartbreak set in the ruins of communist Albania, following two friends who escape the country to attempt a new life in Italy and, later, New York. Statovci inertwines Albanian myth with the grim reality of post-communism, and delivers a strikingly modern narrative where oppression is not just political but lived in the body.
