Beginnings

‘Here, with my back to the grey sea and my feet in the sand, I look at the yellow wall of the hotel where I bit off my tongue.’ In ‘Beginnings’ the protagonist returns to the seaside resort on the Belgian coast where he grew up. On the sea dyke he looks at the building in which his family ran a hotel for generations, a place imbued with memories, stories and scars.

The novel unfolds like a mosaic of observations in the present and snatches of the past. The narrator relives his childhood in the hotel, amid simmering saucepans, prawn croquettes and an endless stream of holidaymakers. He arrives at the memories of his first holiday romance, an unfortunate fall, and a family slowly breaking apart. Over the years the hotel has been transformed countless times, from a charming family business to a soulless holiday centre. Now all that’s left is a concrete relic, slated for demolition.

‘Beginnings’ is a free, associative narrative in the poetic and evocative style that Angelo Tijssens has made his own. The novel is constructed out of short, sensual scenes that dig deeper and deeper into a personal and collective sense of nostalgia. Tijssens connects the history of the narrator and the hotel with broader social themes such as the gentrification of the coast, mass consumption, and a longing for authenticity in a world that is increasingly commercialized. ‘Beginnings’ is an ode to our capacity to give meaning to things again and again, and it invites us to reflect on how we relate to the places that formed us, and to time, which changes everything.