Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground. ~Emily Dickinson
With this poem as its foundation, Gerbrand Bakker writes the most piercing novel I have read all year. It unfolds slowly slowly slowly before us as he teases out the reason why Emilie has come to Wales, to live in a thatched cottage once inhabited by old Mrs. Evans, and dwell there with the white geese who gradually are reduced to only four.
Halfway through the novel a boy with black curly hair, and a great dog named Sam, join her. The boy cooks for her, and fixes up the garden, and refuses to leave each time she asks him. He doesn't inquire about the way her lucidity slips away from time to time, nor about the strips of pills from which she gradually presses more than one to ease her pain. He simply stays with her resolutely.
Far away in Amsterdam, Emilie's husband decides to look for her. He meets with her parents, he hires a detective, and eventually he sends a card which simply says her name, and his, with the words "I'm coming" in between.
I chose to read this book because it was short listed for the IFFP; I feel no need to read any of the other contenders. It is so completely satisfying, so beautifully told, so multi-layered and rich in meaning that I am hoping already it is declared the winner.
Find more thoughts here and here and here.
p.s. Found out on May 20, 2013 that The Detour did in fact win the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Trying not to say "I told you so"... :)
