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She has received widespread acclaim for her lightness of tone and her vividly drawn char­acters. Personal Injury (2022), too, has been very well-received by the press.

Vonne Van der Meer

The house is inhabited by people in crisis: a couple with children, whose father has just committed adultery; a widower planning a suicidal accident so as to spare his daughters; a pregnant girl who, after lengthy reflection, decides to keep her child; a woman with an illness; two lovers caught up in a platonic affair. There is an element of secrecy in all six of Van der Meers stories: there is something that one of the characters either cannot or will not reveal. The author weaves together all their stories with superb subtlety, using a number of binding elements: the book that all of the guests sign; a bottle of shampoo repeatedly left in the bathroom, and above all the woman who cleans up after the old tenants have left, greets the new ones and wonders all the while about the various tales they have to tell.The power of the novel becomes clear for instance in the story of the first guests, Chiel and Dana, and their little boy Floris. Their holiday is overshadowed by the fact that Chiel has just slept with another woman at a conference in Berlin. Chiel does everything he can to regain his wife’s trust, only to have his nose rubbed in his mistake with each new attempt - as for instance when Dana discovers that Chiel gave one of her favourite books to his lover. Fourty pages later the author quietly returns to this, when the cleaning woman flnds Dana’s cheery note in the guestbook: ‘Lucky there’s a bookstore on the island.’ The stories of the tenants of Duinroos are neither bitter nor cynical; in the end each of them choses life. Eilandgasten is thus a breviary of sorts about ordinary, fragile people and the things that happen to them. Held together by a series of subtle motives, the novel is thoughtfully narrated in the stylish, poetic prose that has become Van der Meer’s trademark.

With her superb pen, her compositional ingenuity and her prodigious powers of obseroation, Vonne van der Meer manages to endow even the most insignificant characters and events with brilliance and depth.

'Eilandgasten' is perhaps Vonne van der Meer’s most ordinary book thus far. But when I think of her beautifulfy precise style, it is precisefy that aspect of this latest novel that strikes me as most extraordinary.

Book

Fiction

Asset

Assets

Eilandgasten

In what is by now the extensive oeuvre of Vonne van der Meer, islands occupy a place of prominence. Her characters visit islands in search of peace and quiet, and are then compelled by the isolation to reflect on their lives. On an island, we learn from her new book, everything happens for the first time. 'Eilandgasten' takes place in a holiday house on an island off the coast of Holland called Vlieland. The scheme of the novel, which is brilliant in its simplicity, enables the author to incorporate six very different stories, or mini-dramas. Each chapter introduces a new tenant or tenants; the holiday house is the principal thread that runs through them.

Island Guests

Lucia Terbrugge, age 23, is recovering in a luxurious rehabilitation center by the sea. After a skiing accident she has become paraplegic and will never walk again. Her parents enlist the help of Anton Palthe, a personal injury lawyer on the brink of retirement, who wants to demand an extremly high compensation figure. With a doggedness that’s in part an effort to distract himself from his lonely life as a widower, he sets out in his compensation claim how Lucia’s past as a law student and the child of well-to-do academics was a guarantee for a bright future that’s been stolen from her. It is Lucia’s social capital that determines the amount of the injury claim.While her friends go out to bars, have flings and cram for their exams, Lucia is stuck in her wheelchair listening to the kinds of stories in which she used to play a leading role. She sees less and less of her friends, who feel guilty telling Lucia about things she’ll never be able to do again. The only person she can confide in is Ferry, who is in the same situation. But where Lucia is able to recover in a swanky rehab center, Ferry is stuck in his mom’s no-frills apartment.As the lawyer reads his report to Lucia, she reflects on her life and comes to com­pletely different conclusions about her imagined future. She pushes back against this glamorous version of herself and starts rewriting her compensaton claim, taking responsibility for her new life. The narration alternates between Lucia and Anton, in compelling and wholly natural prose. Both characters take back control over their own lives. Vonne van der Meer skilfully combines their memo­rable voices into a gripping, layered and entirely credible novel.

‘Writing about serious issues in a light-hearted, almost laconic tone is a rare skill, but Vonne van der Meer has it down to a T (…) This book, with its simple but elegant design, is a real gem.’

‘A sparkling novella that keeps surprising right through to the end.’

Letselschade

A young woman ends up in a wheel­chair due to a manufacturing defect in her skis. Her lawyer pursues the highest possible compensation. It’s a straightforward conceit that Vonne van der Meer takes into an unexpected direction. In 'Personal Injury', the way we see ourself clashes with the view of outsiders. Who or what determines the value of an unlived life?

Personal Injury

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Vonne Van der Meer

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