From that one time in 1989 when I actually held a deadly weapon in my hands and was allowed to fire it, all I can really remember is that everything made a lot less noise than I imagined. And of course that I shouldn’t have been so vain and put on my glasses. Now all six bullets I had been dealt were in my neighbor’s target, who thus hit twelve times and I hit zero.
Imagine if this had been the enemy. According to the guys who weren’t equipped with Uzis, but with a FAL, we would never hit anyone at any distance with that piece of scrap anyway, so practicing was pointless anyway and with glasses on you can’t go into war at all. Those bullets were treated as if they were the Italian crown jewels. When we weren’t allowed to shoot, but just walk around with it, on watch or something. Each bullet had to be accounted for separately and woe betide if one was missing, then the entire barracks could be lifted from its bed.
So it didn’t come as a surprise to me that Martin Michael Driessen took a bullet as the main character for his latest novel, The light at the end of the loop† But that is of course astonishing, and also a literary tour de force. A bullet as the narrator in this story of only 96 pages. The reader has to take a step for that. Do we also take that step when the bullet rings in our ears, through the voice of reader Bart Oomen? Yes, effortlessly even, that’s what a bullet sounds like. At least as long as he has not yet been fired and he is of course destined to do so, this main character knows how he will end, but not yet where or in whom.
If you shoot someone accidentally or on purpose, you will first disappear behind bars for a number of years, but there is always light at the end of the term and that is the probation service. However? The idea is not everyone is lost for the rest of their lives after a single misstep. It remains interesting matter and so is the book We wish you the best of luck with your life, written by probation officer Herman van Lunen. A book you can’t pass up for the title alone. Van Lunen has been working for the probation service for more than twenty years and tells about ten stories about his adventures with people who operate on the margins of society and who look for a new perspective after their sentence, sometimes for the simplest things. Beautiful insights into the world after prison, fluently told by Wilbert Gieske, who does not shy away from a somewhat flatter intonation here and there.
The best example of a main character in Dutch literature who envisioned his life very different from how it would ultimately turn out is Kees Bakels from Kees the boy by Theo Thijssen, the teacher who could probably still be just as excited about the state of education today as he was more than a hundred years ago. Kees the boy appeared in 1923, so it’s odd timing that an audio version of it is suddenly out now. In terms of attention, next year would be a lot smarter. But at publishing house Oorkracht 8 they do everything a bit ‘quirky’. In this way the publishing house also pays tribute to the principle of slow recording to give the narrator all the attention. Also good, have a quick listen. Jan Ad Adolfsen tells cheerfully and uses a remarkably fast tempo, perhaps waving his arms back and forth while reading.