_annabel 's review for:

The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld

4.0

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Wowsers, this was a super weird book. I wonder how much is autobiographical having read that the author is also super religious and was brought up on a dairy farm. And after reading it I am worried about how much is autobiographical. It is a super disturbing read. It’s about this family, maybe in the 1990’s, four children, 2 boys and 2 girls. One of the boys dies in an ice-skating accident, he falls through the ice. And then the grief tears the family apart. But it’s told by the elder of the two daughters. The children don’t know how to handle the grief and their parent’s are not helping. Reading it feels super dirty. The girl never takes off her coat, she has these toads in a bucket under her desk, she can’t poo, she sticks a needle in herself and just leaves it. So disturbing. The elder brother goes completely psycho. Starts murdering animals, smoking, drinking, molesting his sisters and their friends. So weird. The ending was a bit weird, but I guess the author had to go somewhere with the story and end on a bit of a bang. It was hard to see how else it could have ended.