Marie

For two years, Marie, ‘the sweetest girl in the world’, was the love and life of ‘the doctor’. After her sudden death, he sinks into a state of mourning from which he is no longer able to escape. His bitterness comes out in his hate for the other villagers in Abraham. This town is teeming with odd characters, who each carry their own secrets. A supposed suicide combined with rumours sets a string of murders in motion. This spills over into manifold bloody revenge and, ultimately, in the style of Hamlet, the story has to end because all the characters are dead.

‘Marie’ is a stylistically virtuoso and strikingly composed novel about love, death and the absurdity of life. Despite the undertone of bottomless grief, ‘Marie’ seduces the reader into gales of blissful laughter. Vekeman paints sharp contrasts: between love and death, between the isolated loner and village life, between the sophisticated style and the striking primitivism of the characters and between the absurd humour and the serious topics broached. The charm of this book lies in the impossible combination of contrasts, which, one way or another, are ultimately drawn together.