Scan barcode
nini23's review against another edition
4.25
Wij zijn licht by Gerda Blees (Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2020) won the 2021 EU Literature Prize and 2021 Dutch Booksellers Award. Translated by Michele Hutchison to English (World Editions, 2023) titled We Are Light. My thanks to World Editions and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review, with apologies for its tardiness.
We Are Light is an intriguing contemporary novel that follows the lives of four Dutch people belonging to a commune called Sound and Love. The four commune members Melodie Van Hellingen, Elisabeth Van Hellingen, Petrus Zwarts and Muriel de Vree believe that light and music transmuted into love plus a minimum of calories are all a human being needs, to transcend. At the novel's opening, Elisabeth is dying. Trigger warnings for eating disorders, imprisonment and death.
The most unique angle of this novel is the variety of different perspectives, not just from the people involved but inanimate objects such as the juicer and musical instruments at the house as well as psychological concepts like cognitive dissonance. Although this approach has been done before eg. in When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola (tr. Mara Lethem), it still translates into a unique reading experience. Some sections work better than others but overall it makes this memorable. I was struck especially by the perspective of daily bread, lamenting that once they were the bulwark of daily nutrition but now are eschewed for being unhealthy carbohydrates. Together they form a chorus of voices and witnesses that inform this case.
The only thing that makes me wary is that the author said in her Acknowledgements and Sources section that this novel was inspired by real life events; namely a woman's death in a commune in central Holland that was publicized. Blees stresses that her novel be read as a fictional work, as she doesn't know what happened nor interviewed the people involved. In other words, it's a fictional rendering of a real life tragedy and I am concerned it may bring pain and unnecessary trauma to the loved ones of the deceased and the survivors.
We Are Light is an intriguing contemporary novel that follows the lives of four Dutch people belonging to a commune called Sound and Love. The four commune members Melodie Van Hellingen, Elisabeth Van Hellingen, Petrus Zwarts and Muriel de Vree believe that light and music transmuted into love plus a minimum of calories are all a human being needs, to transcend. At the novel's opening, Elisabeth is dying. Trigger warnings for eating disorders, imprisonment and death.
The most unique angle of this novel is the variety of different perspectives, not just from the people involved but inanimate objects such as the juicer and musical instruments at the house as well as psychological concepts like cognitive dissonance. Although this approach has been done before eg. in When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola (tr. Mara Lethem), it still translates into a unique reading experience. Some sections work better than others but overall it makes this memorable. I was struck especially by the perspective of daily bread, lamenting that once they were the bulwark of daily nutrition but now are eschewed for being unhealthy carbohydrates. Together they form a chorus of voices and witnesses that inform this case.
The only thing that makes me wary is that the author said in her Acknowledgements and Sources section that this novel was inspired by real life events; namely a woman's death in a commune in central Holland that was publicized. Blees stresses that her novel be read as a fictional work, as she doesn't know what happened nor interviewed the people involved. In other words, it's a fictional rendering of a real life tragedy and I am concerned it may bring pain and unnecessary trauma to the loved ones of the deceased and the survivors.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Mental illness
jojo_'s review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Dementia, Gaslighting, Medical content, and Death
Moderate: Blood, Fatphobia, Ableism, Bullying, and Gore
Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Lesbophobia, and Xenophobia
More...