Servant, Alone

n Jasper and His Servant, author Gerbrand Bakker described his move from Amsterdam to the mountainous German Eifel, the process of restoring a house, taming the garden, getting to know his neighbours, and adopting Jasper, a stray dog whose servant he promptly became. But now the servant is alone. Jasper may have been more of a nuisance than anything else, however, the void left by his death renders the author’s life meaningless and, before long, his loneliness unfolds into a deep depression.

Bakker experiences and contemplates as a writer, jotting down the everyday with searing honesty, ruthlessly portraying himself and those around him. Trading between Eifel and Amsterdam, he describes a chemical darkness that began with an anxiety-ridden road trip to Greece, interweaves conversations and memories of relationships and romances with different men, and runs up against misunderstanding from his family and friends. He gardens, goes back and forth with his sexologists, reflecting on love and desire (and his lack of it). As in Jasper, the battle with self-hate and the need for the structure and labour of writing are ever-present. Across 87 short chapters, the contours of Bakker’s depression emerge through the many small details that envelop it:

A better characterisation of a depression is the word nothing. No man’s land. There is nothing, you are nothing. You are not in touch with yourself, not with your thoughts, not with your feelings, not with your body, not with others.

With a style reminiscent of Knausgaard’s autofiction, Servant, Alone presents an absorbing portrait of a writer’s struggle with an invisible, ineffable condition. His prose is exact, rarely if ever figurative, powerfully evoking loneliness and longing, while at other times tender or wickedly humorous. Or as the jury of the International Dublin Literary Award aptly noted: ‘His writing is wonderful: restrained and clear […]. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes.’