Fortunately, We’re Powerless
‘Fortunately We’re Powerless’ is set during a family celebration. The pretence of family solidarity that the elderly mother and her three children try to maintain cannot disguise the tensions between them. Then there is the indefinable fear caused by the recent disappearance of several young girls and the mysterious white noise that people keep hearing.
The house has extra security, the garden is fenced off, yet the family suddenly discovers that fourteen-year-old Billie is missing, as is Uncle Lex, their old family friend and a former clergyman. With the family picking up all kinds of clues, suspicions and assumptions are rife.
Victoria succeeds in capturing the fear and desperation of modern life in dazzling prose.Het Parool
By fragmenting the chronology of his story, Victoria creates intriguing effects. The feigned cheerfulness of the family, the ambiguity of the characters’ banal behaviour and the gathering storm all suggest something terrible is about to happen. Combined with the suggestive style of the book, this ominous tension keeps the reader spellbound. Victoria plays a shrewdly manipulative game with his readers, who eventually recognize distorted perception and blatant prejudice in themselves.
The way in which Victoria leaves the reader with a gnawing sense of unease is impressive.Libris Literature Prize
The work of a highly imaginative mind, full of scintillating, poetic languageTzum
