Flemish fiction

I've been pretty busy the past weeks with articles and reviews that I forgot to blog. Shame on me! I did however, get a lot of reading done so there's plenty to say.

I read Erik Vlaminck's Brandlucht (among many others) this month because he was the star of September's bookpage and I was amazed by the fact that I actually liked his novel, something that never happens because Flemish fiction and I rarely get along for the simple reason that I don't have any affinity with all things Flemish or Belgian seeing as my upbringing was unconventional and British at best. The language, the situations and the day to day life in these novels usually feels alien and slightly contrived to me, so I was stunned that Brandlucht didn't make me feel queezy which is quite an achievement.

It's the story of Elly, daughter of a Dutch mother and a Flemish father who grows up in Saint Thomas, Canada, and goes in search of her roots. The story is told from multiple perspectives and deals with emigration, truth and the difficulty of shaking one's past. The story was sweet and simple and had some interesting characters and vivacious dialogue which drew you in and gave the novel a simmering pace meaning, I liked it and I wouldn't mind reading more of Vlaminck's novels.

Since I started with my bookpage last December I've read more Flemish fiction than I have in the past 29 years combined, which really took my by surprise. If it hadn't been for my monthly page in Flanders Today I wouldn't have encountered the poetry of Joke van Leeuwen, the illustration's of Eva Cardon, the horror of Yves Petry, the beauty of Bart Moeyeart, the roots of Annelies Beck or had the chance to take down one of my former professors, not the mention the countless reviews I had to write that widened my literary horizon. Thanks FT for paving the road to local fiction! Who knows, we might even become friends.