What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma: book review
Overview: Posthuma has written a book with a quite simple mandate at face value. The novel chronicles grappling with an incredibly deep grief as a sister works through the loss of her twin brother to suicide. There's not much to say in a summary as the magic of this book is purely in the execution, the use of language, the framing. There's so much beauty and insight into grief to be found here but an equal amount is invested into illuminating life. I had a friend criticize a book as "death affirming" recently, and this is one of those books that's the antidote to that. The novel follows the sister from childhood through around age thirty-six or seven and the observations that come from that period of growth, of becoming an adult. There's no proper way to encapsulate this for you. You just have to read it. Overall: 5
When you're truly caught off guard by a certain kind of beauty in a novel, it becomes incredibly hard to articulate the experience to others. I purchased this book at Dubray quite early on in my time in Dublin cause the writing on the first page was truly arresting. I knew I had to read the book. But I was busy and caught up in a wave of so much to read that I didn't come to it until now. I'd been stuck in an abyss of questionably enjoyable reads, and I picked this up after DNFing a book. It proved to be the right choice. I read What I'd Rather Not Think About in two hour-and-a-half sessions. I read the first 100 pages in the evening and the next 100 pages first thing the next morning. This was enabled, somewhat, by the novel being 200 pages and told mostly in very tight vignettes, so many pages weren't even fully covered in text. But there's also a propulsion through the novel that makes you want to read faster and faster. It's not classic tension. We know the brother will die from the outset, and there's not a great sense of mystery built around it. Similar to Breakdown, the novel works these vignettes in a largely chronological order, but as the book progresses and the main clusters of the story move through childhood, twenties, thirties, the book isn't afraid to jump time when emotionally necessary to increase the depth of experience.
This book, though, is far more about life than it is about death.
This is one of the unique reading experiences where the book was entirely a window—I have little firsthand experience with grief—and yet it still resonated to my core. Part of this does come from the ways that I related to the narrator and her particular prism of the world. The style and precision in the use of language is deeply satisfying and appealing. But Posthuma builds such a deep, compelling emotional well that spills forward unselfconsciously and invites the reader into exploring the feelings without being heavy-handed. Truly, you just need to read the book. I couldn't put it down, I felt changed by the experience, minority enraged it didn't win the International Booker in 2024, and deeply glad I stumbled into it. I read it with a highlighter in hand the entire time and found so much here as a person and a writer.
This review feels woefully inadequate for a book I'd been waiting to find all year and that might be the best I've read. I feel like all I can leave you with to explain is the book itself.
Quotes
"This was back when I still wore my feelings on the outside, like a coat, and didn't understand that this wasn't something you were supposed to do." p. 9
"I Collected minerals and fossils, not because I thought they were beautiful but because my mother also collected them." p. 12
"My father also liked hanging out in the shed — presumably for the colours, because he wasn't much of a handyman. Though he acted like he was, in the same way he pretended to be a fun dad." p. 13
"By my twenty-seventh birthday, I owned 142 sweaters, and it was high time I saw a therapist." p. 17
"I did my best to shrink myself in every possible way. I was athletic and a good student but careful not to excel at anything, because that way I would have more friends." p. 19
"I'm terrible at dispensing the right dose of myself." p. 35
"After Rome, he told my mother that he never wanted to go on holiday with me again. My mother casually shared this with me years later, as if she was talking about two entirely different people." p. 57
"I walked to Waverly Place wearing my new coat, looking at myself in every store window along the way. It felt as if I was taking a new path in life. Every new coat makes you feel this way." p. 59
"I felt excited, like I had been the first time Leo and I went to the garden centre to buy plants for the balcony together. Finally, we were real people." p. 80
"For a long time, I didn't have any dreams, he said, because if your dreams don't come true, you're stuck with them." p. 102
"But I was overstimulated from within, I had to find a way to drown out the broken record in my mind." p. 129
"Being the one who leaves guarantees that you won't be the one who is left. My mother has never been left. She was gone long before I was born." p. 186
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