Unsafe childhood grabs you by the throat in timeless novel by Roxane van Iperen | book review ‘I promise’ ★★★★☆

In Van Iperen’s book, the protagonist M. travels from house to house with her parents and little brother, because of her father’s fickle ‘trade’. From the outside it probably doesn’t seem so bad at first glance, this family with the handsome, stylized mother who parades through the village streets of Brabant with her head held high. But at home, violence is lurking everywhere.

That violence sets in I promise rarely explicit, but that doesn’t prevent the scenes from coming in, because the tension is palpable everywhere. Like when M. comes home from school and her things from her room are in the garden, including a piggy bank that now has broken legs and her secret box. Carelessly thrown out the window by her parents during one of their explosive arguments.

Softness and love are few

There is no comfort for such nasty events. In the world of M.’s parents, children are above all a burden. Or even worse: the enemy. You care about it , M.’s mother repeats over and over. Convinced of the fact that her daughter has come to earth to thwart her. Father can not bear the sight of his daughter regularly. She must disappear from his sight. It is not surprising that the loveless tramp existence that follows eventually drives M. into the hands of other abusers.

There is little softness and love, except for a sweet teacher and a friend with a warm family. But when the need is there for M. and her mother on the run from their father – who recently had a game of tennis with new friends turn into a brawl – that family also painfully does not give up. Don’t interfere, ‘the civilized’ people whisper to each other.

It is sometimes hard work for the reader

That loneliness grabs you by the throat as a reader. But the descriptions of an environment with only heavy misery makes the novel hard work here and there and eventually becomes a bit repetitive. So repetitive that it starts to arouse annoyance. Which gives the reader the same experience as how her environment seems to experience the family. Injured animals do not always arouse sympathy in the cruel outside world, but are rejected from the herd. It is not without reason that M. always ends up with her head in the toilet bowl at school.

Van Iperen has succeeded in writing a timeless book about an unsafe childhood, which shapes a child in every thought and every fiber of the body. It is the fate of many children in our country, who, day in and day out, have the same experience as M behind front doors. It is that thought and the grim, oppressive atmosphere that makes reading this book even after the last page. stays with.