Details:
- author: Lucas Rijneveld
- full title: My Heavenly Favorite
- narrator: Allon Sylvain
- genre: literary fiction
- country: Netherlands
- topics: #hebephilia, #unreliablenarrator
- publisher: Dreamscape Media
- publish date: 05 Mar 2024
- timing: 9:23:00
My Rating of the Audiobook:
- content: 💙💙💙💙
- narration: 💙💙💙💙💙
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| Goodreads |
Excerpt from the Book:
And you went on to say that if you ever became famous, really famous, you’d always remember where you came from, you’d never forget the smell of silage, of ammonia, cow shit, or your friends, you really wouldn’t, but you already knew you’d lose something essential, that success genuinely would change you and at the same time perpetuate something or maybe even make it worse, such as the endless emptiness already inside you – but I overlooked these symptoms, me, who knew exactly when an animal was sick or when it was producing too many stress hormones, I didn’t see it because I wanted to believe in your resilience, which you would end up needing so keenly, I looked away as I had done four years earlier during the foot-and-mouth outbreak, telling a farmer that it was a virus and would pass, I couldn’t bear the thought of the whole herd being culled because I’d it seen before, the way some cows, sheep and goats were still alive when they were thrown into the disposal truck, their legs kicking at the sides, and that same week I went to a cattle farm with an outbreak of pleuritis and when I went inside at lunchtime to fetch my peanut butter sandwiches from my briefcase, knowing I’d hardly manage a bite, and went unsuspecting into the hall, I saw the farmer hanging from the banister at the top of the stairs – first I saw the soles of his boots with shit and straw still in the tread, then his overalls and only after that the lifeless entirety; I’d closed my eyes to spare myself, hoping I could still save him, that I could rewind everything to the moment I’d driven my black Fiat van into the farmyard, and that I could talk him round the way Queen Beatrix talked the people round by using the word we a lot, I’d noticed, and how that worked – the way it worked with you – but back then I didn’t yet know what it was like to lose the dearest thing one had, I didn’t know that sometimes there were no words that could counter a loss; I wanted to try to rescue him from the noose, I could have at least pressed him to my chest the way I did with the clay-shitters, the sick calves, looking into their eyes to see how their rumen was developing, yes, I’d hold him like a clay-shitter and maybe whisper something in his ear, a line by Leonard Cohen, I think he’d appreciate that.My Thoughts:
My Heavenly Favorite is a very intensive novel, and it was very hard to read. Subject: A confession of a 49-year-old veterinarian who claims to be in love with a troubled 14-year-old girl who is dealing with mental issues. Needless to say, his past and childhood were far from perfect. Not that this makes it ok. Anyway, Nabokov’s Lolita first comes to mind.Many of the readers will stop here.
This is another one of those novels you either love or hate - for various reasons. But the most obvious reasons for hating this novel are child exploitation and pedophilia (or better - hebephilia). Also, the sentences are very long, and the chapters contain very few paragraphs. (One thing I rarely like. But I found it great here - at least in audiobook form). If you look from the other perspective, Rijnveld created a novel that is like a whirlwind that sweeps you along with it. This way, you can see into the mind of a disturbed man. Even if you don’t like what you see there.
Throughout the book, there are many references to movies, books, music, and events. From Kurt Cobain, Stephen King's It to Hitler, Freud, and Nine Eleven.
The novel leaves us with a similar aftertaste as The Discomfort of Evening. In the end, you are not sure if you really want to read this novel. But on the other hand, you appreciate the author. It’s not the shocking things that make this novel interesting. It's rather the opposite. It is the execution and writing that convinces you. And you know you won’t forget this novel so easily.
The narration was very well done by Allon Sylvain. This is one of those books when the audiobook version is easier to get through. I appreciated the authentic pronunciation of some names and places.
About the Author:
Lucas Rijneveld grew up in a Reformed farming family in North Brabant before moving to Utrecht. He is the author of The Discomfort of Evening, which was the first Dutch book to win the International Booker Prize, as well as three poetry collections.
Michele Hutchison is a literary translator from Dutch and French into English. She is the winner of the Vondel Translation Prize for her translation of Stage Four by Sander Kollaard and the International Booker Prize together with Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening.
About the Narrator:
