Formally, the Velsen-Zuid from which Telstar finally enters the Eredivisie after three generations, but anyone looking for a bookcase near the most huggable football club in the country, soon ends up in Driehuis, where the Schrijversbuurt hits its name, although literature is not the only thing that blooms here. To reach the shelves here you must first push a boisterous primrose aside. But then you will also find the most recent novel (2024) of the well -known Telstarfan PF Thomése.
Black-out takes place for about twenty in the south of Driehuis – and a few social classes higher – in the Villadorp Blankendaal, in which it is easy to recognize the well -to -do Bloemendaal, of which Thomése flexes the self -satisfied wealth smoothly. A ‘reserve’, where one is not tuk on outsiders and considering their own happiness as ‘blissfully self -earned’. Although there is also dissatisfaction lurking in paradise. “Here too, people swallowed the bitter pills of the deficiency. What they missed remained unclear. It was not uncommon for lawyers that there were not friendly to put the demands into words, although something was rarely won with it.”
Thomése, for example, puts you on the trail of a rich man sensire, in which you wish the main characters in itself that their false certainties are put to the test. However, the all -determining moment in the novel is something that you don’t give anyone: the death of a girl of six. It happens in her own garden, where suddenly a apparently unmanageable Volvo comes through the fence. The driver is the 31-year-old voice actress Grace, who has fallen lost in the neighborhood (“This Millionaire Swing Court, which was just as inimitable as their tax returns”) where her ex has settled with a photo model.
The novel revolves around the misery that follows the disaster. Extra complication: Grace and her husband are black; As a result of which the tragedy feeds different white people in the conviction that all misery comes from outside. Thomése rises the scenes with a high-emotional impact smoothly-sometimes very smoothly-together. The story is propelled by the contrast between the two parents of the deceased Pip. The mother, Tessel, is held hostage by a permanent state of anger, panic and self -defend – which culminates when she plays in the grave behind her daughter’s white box.
That can see the whole world, which is related to the rather opposing reaction from her husband Mark, a real estate lawyer of the most hateful species that falls back on the only thing he controls: organizing. For example, he wants to turn the funeral into an unforgettable event, with two carriages, masses of white people along the road, speeches of dignitaries and the inevitable live stream.
All attempts to control mourning only leads to more misery, in which Thomése succeeds in provoking the men who are mainly variations on the archetype ‘bastard’ compassion.
For the Thoméselezer, this outdoor novel about the death of a child cannot be seen separately from Shadow childhis novella from 2003, in which a mourning father focuses in, in an attempt that the language can bring something of softening. Black-out Doctors a failed incantation: whatever you boost on the outside, the pain is on the inside.