It’s a book I received for free as a gift back in 2007 – a gift part of the ‘Maand van het spannende boek’ (Month of the scary book). It has been here at my apartment all this time (it even survived the move to this apartment – so I must have been planning on reading it) but up until this past week I never got around to reading it. Reason for that is probably because it is a Dutch book. I’m native Dutch but most books/stories I read are in English. I prefer English books to Dutch because I feel more comfortable with the English language. I don’t know maybe because I write in English myself, but I always feel like descriptions are more accurate and there are so many words you can choose from to describe emotions and feelings.
I’ve never read a book by Saskia Noort, I have seen some of the movies they made based on her books though. And I like those, for Dutch movies they are really entertaining and really good.
The word ‘afgunst’ means envy, and that is exactly what the book is about from the beginning to the ending it is all about envy. And everything that goes with it, revenge, anger and bitterness. And an overall feeling of being denied what should be yours. In my opinion the characters inner voices were really well written. The problem with the story was more in the shortness of it I think. It’s a short story so the development of the situation has to go quickly. It goes from a normal night at a library for an author who’s doing a book signing to a life and death kidnap situation with a very envious ex-boyfriend who thinks he’s entitled to the success the author has earned.
This book was something different. I have never read anything quite like it. It’s a small book, most books I read have a couple of hundred pages so this was something new. It’s 96 pages, so I think it’s considered a novella? You constantly switch from the POV of the MMC to the FMC. Some of these parts are only half a page long, yet it gives insight into the emotions (as jealous and ridiculous as they are) behind the act. The book was entertaining however it was also quite predictable at some times. And even though there was a twist at the end the predictability was kind of a turn down. I kept reading because it was such a small book, however had this been a bigger story the predictability would have stopped me from continuing.
I’ve read better books but I’m sure some of it is part of the fact that this is a short story. And in the future I want to read other books by Saskia Noort.
Nanoright 