Craving by
Esther Gerritsen, translated by Michele Hutchison
5 stars – Highly
Recommended by Kate
Pages: 177
Released: Jan 2015
Guest review by Kate Vane
Some books draw you in with an intriguing premise,
extraordinary characters or dramatic locations. I’m just as fascinated by writers
who create something entrancing out of the everyday.
Craving is the
story of an apparently ordinary family in an unnamed Dutch town. It begins when
Elisabeth has a chance meeting in the street with her adult daughter, Coco.
Elisabeth takes the opportunity to tell her some important news – she is dying.
The dark humour of the book is immediately apparent. Coco cycles
away, filled with excitement at the news, calculating how she can manipulate it
for her own ends. Elisabeth is left with an awkward sense that she hasn’t quite
dealt with this as she should.
Elisabeth is described by her family as having autism. She
struggles to negotiate the complexities of her relationships with her ex-husband
and daughter. She feels more at ease with her hairdresser.
Coco soon moves back into her mother’s home. This is less an
act of compassion than an attempt to provoke her boyfriend, whose interest in
her is waning. When mother and daughter are thrown together, the tensions
between them are highlighted. Coco constantly seeks sensation – overeating, sex
in public, petty acts of destruction. Elisabeth longs for calm and order. Coco
wants answers about her past but for Elisabeth the questions make no
sense.
The author of Craving
is also a playwright and this book has some of the feel of a stage play. It
takes place in a small number of locations and the encounters between the
characters are tightly drawn. Elisabeth’s inability to understand the dynamics
of her family is at times poignant, at others funny and occasionally enviable.
While those around her are weighted down with guilt and empathy, she is free to
say what she thinks – with comic consequences.
However, the author also takes us deep into the characters. She
shows the ways that Elisabeth and Coco have shaped each other. In particular, she
gives us a sense of what it would be like to be Elisabeth – what she sees, what
she fails to understand but also the perceptions she has that others lack – her
faithful memory, her sense of the texture of things, the taste and scent of emotions
and events.
I was almost afraid to get to the end. I didn’t want melodrama,
but nor did I want another literary novel which is beautifully written but
unresolved. I needn’t have worried. In keeping with the rest the end is subtle
but startling.
Kate Vane writes crime and literary fiction. Her latest novel is Not the End.
No comments:
Post a Comment