Esther Gerritsen writes Cloisonne 2016 – Wedding

© anp. Esther Gerritsen

Esther Gerritsen writes Cloisonne of next year. This Gerritsen is the first female Author Book Week since 2002, when Anna Enquist could write the annual gift book.

Esther Gerritsen (Gendt, 1972) initially wanted to be an actress. But because she was accepted in any acting school, she first went to study drama therapy and then drama writing & amp; literary education at the School of the Arts in Utrecht. Initially she wrote especially plays.

Her prose debut, the story collection “Privileged consciousness’, published in 1999. In addition, she has five novels to her name. The last two, “Super Dove” (2010) and “Thirst” (2012), both of which were nominated for the Libris Literature Prize.

French Kellendonk price
In 2012 she was awarded the French Kellendonk Prize, which is awarded once every three years for a literary work that demonstrates an “independent and original approach to social problems.”
“Thirst” is filmed now. Since 2010 Gerritsen writes a weekly column for the VPRO guide. She also collaborated on the screenplay for the romantic drama film Nena, which came out last year.

The 81st edition of the Book Week next year will take place from 12 to 20th March. The theme of the book festival, organized by the CPNB, will be announced later. For the edition earlier this year wrote the Fleming Dimitri Verhulst’s Cloisonne.

Read below the wonderful interview that reporter Hanne Obbink late 2013 with her. She was working on her book Roxy that appeared in 2014.

“That survival instinct of people that I want to explore

Her new book is hopeful, announces writer Esther Gerritsen to. This is new to her, and difficult. “Because I might not believe it himself. Not at all.

Esther Gerritsen is just making coffee when the postman rings. A package of model cars, she picks it out immediately. The main character in the book she is working now, is the daughter of a truck driver, so she wants a few cars to know exactly how they look. A model of a Scania truck had them all, now they can also be an SUV from Chevrolet, Fiat Panda and put a Nissan on her desk. “Oh look, from Chevrolet the doors open.”

Merry: “Soon readers may think that I know a lot of cars, but I am only two days doing Look, here… A book about trucks Have I bought yesterday Funny still nice to lose yourself somewhere as “

When you started on your new book, you twittered:..!” This morning I thought, I’m already fixed. Afternoon: this is brilliant. So I’m going to fill 600 days. How is it going?

“I’m surprised that the two thoughts come by every day and that I again take seriously every time. I have always are in a hurry, I write very quickly to have a vague first version have, because I want to know if it is something. I always want to do something I have not in previous books have done. My previous book, I suddenly just find a kind of slapstick. I want to continue, each time a layer there , giving characters more and more sides.

“Now I have a first draft. And yes, I do believe that what is. So now I start again, very quiet, improve what I have. But soon I get back in a hurry, there is apparently associated with. It is like two years on the edge of my seat. “

What is fun to write it for you?

” What’s funny! That never asks anyone. I do not necessarily like it when I’m at work so hasty. But now I’m a long way though. The fun of course, is that it succeeds what you had in mind. Most interesting is if you’re going to write something you just do not get it at all. Or where you never try to give words. Once the word has been given, it is resolved, defused.

“All the thoughts and feelings you have, even if you’re ashamed of, or if you find them strange, and you never can articulate, you can write them so that they are legitimate and that other people understand them. “

To illustrate Gerritsen refers to her latest book,” Thirst “. In it, a mother and a daughter who barely see each other on the street. The mother does not need it, but she says it: she has cancer, she dies. And the daughter is not much point in it, but she does it: she pulls her mother to care for her. The mother feels there just embarrassed about and a book long will the two strangers. But indeed, their behavior, their feelings, however unpleasant, appear legitimate. “When the daughter was two, her mother closed her regularly throughout the day,” says Gerritsen. “Actually a very nasty mother. Yet almost no one really takes the readers her annoying.”

So it is more common in the novels of Gerritsen. Reviewers write that “human failure turns her work ‘or that they’ captures human discomfort. For its protagonists is almost nothing for granted, especially when dealing with other people.

Why is that discomfort, that failure is such an important issue for you?

“I always emphasize the strange person. I write about strange people who experience common things, never the other way around, never on an ordinary person who is experiencing something strange. No, naturalness in dealing there is little. When I write dialogue, I walk after three sentences fixed then there arises spontaneously incomprehension. “

Do you experience that also in conversations?

” It amazes me that more people often indeed understand each other than they do not. That discomfort I find quite obvious. Whether it applies to everyone, I do not know, but I am always very aware that I have to make every second a choice of three hundred possibilities. Simply, in a conversation like this. What will I answer and what not? How do I there? I still pour coffee or not? Shall I now laugh at my daughter? I do not know any better than that I’m constantly working on it. “

You have that myself sometimes’ about consciousness mentioned. You even got a headache thinking while playing soccer.

“Yes. That’s how I am, yes. In the past I tended to everything I was thinking out loud to speak, from which about conscious everything that happened commenting in dealing with people. Just to say when something was uncomfortable. Very annoying, that you just do not. And I do not do it anymore, I made that choice.

“It might help also I have a child. That makes everything even more chaotic, because it is there all the time and she demands attention. That’s actually useful, because then you have to choose what you do and do not react to it. “

Her daughter of four feeds them together with her ex-husband. This weekday morning her daughter does not go to school They may be a couple of hours watching television and there she had been looking forward to. But she still does not like it. So they will sometimes stop by. To request a pair of scissors. Or markers. Or to her new coat see Occasionally they slide a drawing under the door “Ha post!” exclaims her mother enthusiastically

Gerritsen Raised in a model family from the seventies, “she says…: father, mother, boy, girl. Ten years ago, her brother died. In her novels family is a source of discomfort and mutual incomprehension. But no, that has nothing to do with her own origins. “Someone who is an interview with my parents came home, said after two minutes to me, it is clear that it is not your mother that occurs in your books

“Families are interesting.. Families resemble one another, they are, after family. But they also have something of a random group of people together is encountered in the elevator. Your circle of friends is often a homogeneous group within your family you have people with very different interests.

“My brother was a network administrator, we were very different. When he was sick, we looked together at the Tour de France . I do not, and certainly not with friends. Something you do only with family. It’s a kind of unconditional friendship. If all goes well, you can not screw it up. Family is forever, which I find moving. ”

True, you are already a master at making unusual and unnatural of what is normal and natural “mentioned.

” Haha. Yes. That goes without saying. I was a time with a friend who had made a very strange desert, weird Anal beads or so that we were tasting, and just before I would put it in my mouth, I said. “I’m afraid” Something new always taste. something strange, something threatening. This nominate me. “Look, that’s what you do,” said the friend. “Everyone thinks it’s a little scary, but as you say, it sounds like it is very disturbed.” That’s right. I isolate something small that I appoint and then it seems weird. “

Weird, yes. But in your novels that weird often grows into something very sombre. Put you out of your own gloom?

“When I work, I especially myself to draw from. My novels are always about how a person relates to himself, about inner processes. Dialogues I can plagiarize what I see and hear from other people. But when it comes to what happens in your head, I can only take my own head.

“But in my book is always a certain side magnified. It is always but a part of me. ‘Super Dove’, for example is about a girl who fantasizes about how they save people. That rescue fantasies can I have, yes. Through that book I talked about constantly and I was – even to myself – that woman who rescue fantasies. For two days I know that cars play a large role in my new book. There I immerse myself in now. Soon I’m probably the woman who is so fond of cars. And that will still be true, I feel the love for cars already grow. “

Your next book to be hopeful, have been announced. If that?

” Haha that I will try, yes. That is not easy. But it seems to work. Yes, there is hope. “

Why does that not matter?

” Books that turn out well, we do not seem to appreciate. My previous books were best able to turn out well, but I always stopped just before. As in ‘Super Dove. That ends up miserable. The main character, a girl of thirteen, says, “Dad, Mom, I’d love to death.” But that’s the start of something good: she says what she thinks rather that they escape into fantasies “

Why do you love to write something hopeful

” I was reading. an interview with a woman who was dying, the consolation of music. That touched me. How comforting? How does hope? Many people face every day in good spirits on. That interests me, because I can make up a lot of good reasons why you may feel miserable, why do not you want to get up, why you hate each other. That survival instinct that good sense which gaiety, which I want to explore. “

” It’s hard to write about comfort and love, about what you would want to teach your children, ‘have you ever told . Why?

“Because you do not always believe in, I’m afraid. Because you fear that it was not true. That’s the funny thing: you want a child to learn good things which you perhaps do not entirely believe. Not at all. “

What great thing would you like to teach your child?

” That she is kind to the people around her, but she is also fair. And that’s what they’re already wrong. I teach her that she should not lie about what they feel, but they do have to lie to people when they are doing differently pain. Except as herself hurts too much. (Chuckle). That’s the fun of children: as a mother, you are immediately confronted with the difficulty of being human

“Or am I now to chat to my neck I say to my child.?: You are allowed to I say that woman is fat, but you can not tell her, because then you hurt her. No, that’s not so complicated.

“What I find it difficult? Well, look … All kids movies run well. That should be, because it’s too miserable if it does not happen. But it has nothing to do with reality. If someone dies, my daughter asks: how do they make that life again? Sometimes you have to explain that you can not. Still, you hope that she gets up every day with the belief that the day will be fine, you hope that she believes her father and mother did not die being. But you know that’s not necessarily true

“PF Thomése said when his daughter died:. We were in the lie that everything just goes well, now we are in the truth that everything is just wrong and we must go back to the lie, otherwise you can not live. With such a hopeful lie you have to educate your child.

“When my brother died, I walked around with the demand months What should I do with the idea that you can just go dead and that this may be the last day? And after months I thought, forget, I believe. Because you can not live with the thought that it may have just ended. That whole stupid romance of life as if it is your last day, which can not exist. You should just pretend you have eternal life. It is a kind of lie of happiness and hope. “

And that’s hard to write about?

” Maybe because it’s not quite true. The literature often exposes what is not entirely true. But in real life you can not live with that exposure. You have to find something in between. How do you survive without total lie? “