The Restlessness of the Night, by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

The restlessness of the night
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The worst things are those that happen out of time. No time is good for early goodbyes.

Despite this, the worst things happen, with that haphazard cadence that cannot be explained in human reason despite trying to associate it with some kind of fatality prelude to rewards or transcendental understandings that never come.

Jas's brother dies in the middle of those hours when a brother is more essential than ever, if essentiality can be graduated. What happens next is that tragedy of the sister who feels out of place, blind, mutilated and in the middle of a transition towards a maturity that appears in her reality like an abyss under her feet.

A story of mourning and the stark choice between overcoming it or giving in to it. Jas lives in that uncertain land between childhood and adolescence when she loses her brother in an accident while skiing.

The pain of mourning adds to the already difficult task of becoming an adult and Jas, who feels abandoned by her family, indulges in her impulses to survive. She invokes her brother in strange rituals, loses herself in compulsive erotic games, ventures off torturing animals, and fantasizes about God and "the other side" in a search for herself and someone to rescue her.

It is the struggle of a girl to understand death, never named but present in every corner, because only then will she be able to overcome it. A story from within the skin in which it is impossible not to feel every chill, every outburst, every wound. An awkward and beautiful debut from who is already one of the most important voices in Holland.

You can now buy the novel «The restlessness of the night», a book by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, here:

The restlessness of the night
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