Under the skin of an awkward awakening

Erwin Mortier

Harvill, 9.99

FROM the very beginning of this novel by acclaimed Dutch writer Erwin Mortier, young protagonist Anton is aware of the painful gulf that separates him from life. His inability to connect with those around him is articulated in a narrative voice which forces us to co-habit his thin skin.

The story is told in three parts: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. Anton’s early life is marked by the elusive. Lacking the vocabulary to make sense of his environment, his days are a celebration of the moment, without understanding. The comfort of routine and the minute pleasures of childhood such as walking in the warmth of his father’s shoes, and throwing cut grass, exist without explanation. Even a sudden death in the family is accepted with incomprehension.

If Anton has struggled to understand the meaning of events in childhood, his adolescence is a struggle with meaninglessness. He is sent to "St Joseph’s institute for hopeless education", where the curriculum is a diet of boredom and the biblical. The collegiate environment merely accentuates his singularity. Like his ill-fitting swimming trunks that expose and embarrass him, Anton is not comfortable with who he is. Socially, emotionally and physically he just doesn’t fit. And his adolescent awkwardness is only exacerbated by the re-appearance of cousin Roland, the nemesis of his childhood.

It is Anton’s friendship with the sophisticated Willem that finally enables him to feel accepted, the authenticity of love wrapping him like a second skin. But it is not a skin which offers further insulation from the world. Through the experience and loss of this friendship, Anton arrives at an understanding of his status as an eternal outsider. In a moment of genuine epiphany he realises that even his mother does not really know him.

This is not a novel which relies on the suspense of plot twists, or the guerrilla warfare of literary devices. With a simplicity of style, Mortier charts the psychological landscape of an individual’s maturation, revealing how we outgrow younger versions of ourselves, shedding and re-shedding our own identities. But here he is also prepared to question the adage that what one gains with age is experience, recognising that all one truly learns is the elusiveness of experience.

Mortier brings new meaning to the phrase "economical with the truth", conveying depths of emotional intelligence with the merest touches of description. Nothing is wasted. What resonates throughout his writing is its subtlety.

Although it begins and ends with death, this is a novel that celebrates the passage of life. While it meditates on childhood and growing up, there is nothing mawkish in Mortier’s treatment of these themes. This is a novel alive with awakenings, not the slumber of nostalgia.

It is a journey every one of us has been through - the passage from childhood to adulthood. Its landscape is that of the self, growing to maturity in a world which seems as ill-fitting as Anton’s swimsuit.