Een boek om langzamer te lezen dan ik deed.

• one of the most unique books I’ve read in a very long time. I place this similarly as the book ‘pew’ by catherine lacey: odd, leaving me with more questions than answers
• The ending puzzled me somewhat 
• I really disliked Robin, the protagonists girlfriend. Perhaps that was the point.

The Opposite of a Person, by Dutch writer and poet Lieke Marsman, is one of the more unusual books I’ve read this year.

It’s a story that covers everything from population control to sexual identity, and it does so through the lens of climate change and human impact.

It is not a conventional novel because it lacks a sustained plot, there’s next to no characterisation and it’s written in a fragmentary style, which includes snippets of poetry, quotes from other publications and an entire section on the abbreviated history of philosophy.

It is, essentially, a “novel of ideas”.

The translator, Sophie Collins, puts it better, describing it as a “book of hyperobjects, [a] term for those things that are so spatially and temporally vast as to be practically unfathomable”.

And yet it’s an effortless read and one that resonated on many levels.

The story is narrated by Ida, a young climate scientist who accepts an internship at a climate research institute in the Italian Alps. The institute fears that a wall in a decommissioned hydroelectric dam is about to burst because of ever-increasing rainfall and sediment build-up, putting 80,000 people living in nearby villages at risk. A demolition plan is put in place to prevent this disaster from happening.

As Ida struggles to adjust to her new life (she left her girlfriend behind in the Netherlands to take on this new role), she grapples with the realisation that the world is undergoing an existential threat.

It doesn't sound cheery, does it? But somehow I came away from it feeling a sense of hope.

For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.

4+

Een boek om opnieuw te lezen

"Ik wilde zijn zoals zij, vrouwen die met iedereen omgingen, maar helemaal niemand nodig hadden, en ik was precies het tegenovergestelde: ik ging met helemaal niemand om, maar had iedereen nodig"

Na het herlezen vind ik deze beter! Love dat

Kabbelt rustig voort en komt dan abrupt tot een eind, en dat is geenszins storend. Filosofische verhandelingen tussendoor zijn soms wat taai, maar wel de moeite waard.