A squirrel! The animal darts behind a bookcase, which was erected in a neighborhood full of neat single-family homes on the outskirts of Heerlen. It turns out to be a good omen: in addition to quite a bit of German work on various subjects such as youth care and Canada, the cabinet contains the debut novel that was acclaimed when it was published five years ago and was ultimately nominated for the Libris Prize. We are light by Gerda Blees. Heard a lot about it, but hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet.
All praise appears to be justified. Blees begins her novel in the same type of single-family home that fills the Heerlen neighborhood, albeit one in which something terrible has happened. The house was the domain of the Klank en Liefde residential group, which, under the leadership of the dominant ex-cellist Melodie, had decided to live only on light and love. That was more spirituality than the body of the oldest member, Melodie’s sister Elisabeth, could tolerate. She dies, emaciated and starving. The two younger living group members Muriël and Petrus sit there in confusion. By the way, Melodie does not think that anything terrible has happened, she is actually delighted with how beautifully Elisabeth has managed to let go of everything.
The doctor called to the remains is shocked by Elisabeth’s malnourished body and the thin bodies of her housemates. He cannot see any natural death in it. Melodie, Muriël and Petrus end up in jail, with the plot being propelled by the question of whether the three will actually be prosecuted. It is soon clear that Melodie is tightly sticking to her story, but the faith of the other two is wavering.
That already provides enough reason to continue reading, but Blees has also chosen an extraordinarily elegant way to deepen her story. In each chapter a new ‘we’ takes the floor: starting with ‘We are the night’. This is followed by relatively obvious narrators such as ‘we are the neighbors’, but also discoveries such as ‘we are our daily bread’. In this way, not only is the story continued from a slightly different angle; it also produces witty side paths, such as the grumbling of the aforementioned bread, which now feels misunderstood by people who fear gluten and carbohydrates: “We have made man great, literally, and now man pushes us aside as an outdated truth.”
In this way, Blees beautifully shows the web of stories in which Elisabeth’s starvation took place. Before you know it, you – this is also a narrator – are in the app group of her brothers and sisters, which meanders beautifully from sadness for the deceased, to an obsession with seemingly rather trivial practical matters, to all kinds of subcutaneous tensions and ingrained family patterns.
The highlight of the storyteller’s parade is the seventeenth chapter ‘we are the story’ in which Blees begins to review what has happened up to that point. We are light has been described: “Slowly and predictably we are heading towards our outcome – the climax, or the anticlimax, that remains to be seen.” The story is a bit dissatisfying; it would have liked to be furnished with more spectacular and explicit developments. The nice thing is that in this way Blees introduces those extra elements into her novel through the back door. Which, as the ultimate reward, also has a very exciting ending, which revolves around the question to what extent escapes are possible.
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