The Discomfort of Evening

A Novel

By: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Michele Hutchison - translator

Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt

Winnter of the 2020 International Booker Prize

A stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literature

Ten-year-old Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world: her face soft like cheese under her mother’s hands; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of “blush words” that aren’t in the Bible.

One icy morning, the disciplined rhythm of her family’s life is ruptured by a tragic accident, and Jas is convinced she is to blame. As her parents’ suffering makes them increasingly distant, Jas and her siblings develop a curiosity about death that leads them into disturbing rituals and fantasies. Cocooned in her red winter coat, Jas dreams of “the other side” and of salvation, not knowing where this dreaming will finally lead her.

A best seller in the Netherlands, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s radical debut novel The Discomfort of Evening offers listeners a rare vision of rural and religious life in the Netherlands. In it, they ask: In the absence of comfort and care, what can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when that is not enough? With stunning psychological acuity and images of haunting, violent beauty, Rijneveld has created a captivating world of language unlike any other.

©2018 Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Translation © 2020 by Michele Hutchison. Epigraph quotations appear on: a statue of Maurice Gilliams in Antwerp (source unknown); from ‘Spring’ in The Collected Poems of Jan Wolkers, published as Verzamelde gedichten in 2008 by De Bezige Bij. (P)2020 Audible Ltd., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Genevieve Gaunt's performance of this audiobook - soft-voiced, delicately accented, hauntingly matter-of-fact—suits the 10-year-old narrator, Jas. There is an innocence to Gaunt's tone that adds to Jas's unsettling tale of loss and struggle." (AudioFile Magazine)

“The effects of the unspeakable grief felt by 10-year-old Jas’ family after the death of her beloved older brother are explored in painful and painstaking detail in this startling debut novel.... Rijneveld’s extraordinary narrator describes a small world of pain which is hard to look at and harder to ignore.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

"Rijneveld's International Booker Prize-shortlisted debut is not a novel for those expecting triumphal outcomes. Readers who can persist through the agonies of a family falling apart, however, will find their breath taken away by Rijneveld's prose as filtered through Hutchison's deft translation.“ (Booklist, starred review)

the discomfort of constipation

an in-depth look at the character and her life and environment. sadly unable to resonate with a ten year old who is being abused and harassed by all around her. seemed a bit over the top and cruel could never imagine letting my kids behave this way.

Amazing

Simply beautiful. A gorgeous account of adolescent innocence and curiosity, of death and what it means to keep living, or not.

Very good, well written and narrated

This was a very good book and the narration was perfect.
It is dark story expertly told
I noticed some reviewers were upset with some of the sexual content but I think it was necessary to highlight the extreme neglect these children experienced and how they tried to deal with what they were going through

Daaaarrrrkkkkk

I don't know about evening, but I can tell you that this book was discomforting. Winner of the International Booker Prize this year, it's worthy. But, dark ... man.

The writing was incredible. The author has an amazing way with words, and they didn't hold anything back. The story was raw and unnerving.

I didn't enjoy it, but I did appreciate.

Rated R: Sexual situations

Loved It!

The narration was superb, for starters, and a perfect match for this story. This book was exactly the kind I like best: something different involving a character study. Having read many Booker prize books over the years, I am surprised this was only shortlisted and not a winner. It had all the elements they usually seek out. I will look forward to more from this author!

Amazing though dark

This is brilliantly written I think but reveals the dark side of religious restrictive life. The insights shown of this young woman intrigues me. It was an excellent book to listen to.

Difficult themes and scenes, artful writing

Listening to this novel can be challenging. Anyone in their right mind will be disturbed by scenes and events described by the main character, a prepubescent girl named Jas. But Jas’s innocent perspective and frank, honest voice give this dark story an aura of purity. There is nothing exploitive or titillating here. It is stark and devastating in the telling, as it should be. The writing is perfection.

Jas’s entire world is her cold, strictly religious parents’ (they are Bible quoting Reformists) dairy farm, where she lives with an older brother and younger sister. A second brother, close to her age, dies in an accident, and the family falls into an abyss of grief. Her parents drift apart from one another and withdraw from their children (Jas yearns for her mother’s touch). The mother becomes anorexic and suicidal, the father harsh, angry and unforgiving. The teenaged brother grows increasingly cruel, abusive and dangerous, while Jas harms her own body as an act of penance for her brother’s death, for which she blames herself.

Death is the warp of this novel, grief the weft. Horrific things take place. But we see it all through the wide eyes of an innocent child. These severely neglected children explore each other sexually. The brother abuses and even kills animals for pleasure. As shocking as this is — for us, the listeners and readers — Jas does not fully understand what she is describing. She is curious, while we are horrified. Her child’s voice, and naïveté, are consistent through out the book. She is young for her years, in many ways, but wise in her observations. I liked her. I wanted to weep for her.

Jas dreams of escaping the farm (crossing the bridge over a lake, to “the other side,” from where, her father tells her, she can never return), but she is held fast by fear of retribution and the need for parental love. Love that is not offered.

The abrupt end of the novel is devastating. There is no denouement, just an end point. Death, and maybe — finally — comfort. This is a novel you will be thinking over for days.

Beautifully read, beautiful book

This is an amazingly beautiful articulation of a naive young girls attempt to process her family’s grief and loss and her own ,through a thicket of rigidity, neglect, coldness and cruelty that ensued as a result. There is not an iota of maudlin sentiment in this writing. It is sharp and clear and despite the subject, just shines.

Brilliant!

An amazing journey through grief and longing through the voice of a child. Shocking and endearing at the same time. Brilliant story and beautiful reading.

The narrator is wonderful. My cat likes to listen.

The narrator is wonderful. My cat likes to listen. I think the narrator is the best part of the experience in print or audio play. I bought the book and it had a typo the audio performance made clear. It's very good audio art in my shrunken-headed opinion.