Stephanie Jane reviewed Thirty Days by Annelies Verbeke
Wonderful sense of location
4 stars
Thirty Days has a wonderful sense of its rural Belgian setting and I particularly appreciated in this novel how Verbeke used location to illustrate the issues she raises throughout the story. Westhoek is reasonably near the French border and the locals see no problem with border hopping for cheaper grocery items or similar mundane needs. Yet their anger is roused when a group of desperate Syrian refugees set up a temporary home near the village with the hope of progressing to the UK. Easy border crossings, it would seem, are reserved for Europeans only.
Alphonse has lived in Belgium for years but, having only recently arrived in Windhoek, is very much an outsider. Verbeke cleverly portrays the closely interlinked village and I could imagine similar places I have known. Everyone knows what everyone else is up to so, for some people there, Alphonse being disconnected and neutral is a relief. …
Thirty Days has a wonderful sense of its rural Belgian setting and I particularly appreciated in this novel how Verbeke used location to illustrate the issues she raises throughout the story. Westhoek is reasonably near the French border and the locals see no problem with border hopping for cheaper grocery items or similar mundane needs. Yet their anger is roused when a group of desperate Syrian refugees set up a temporary home near the village with the hope of progressing to the UK. Easy border crossings, it would seem, are reserved for Europeans only.
Alphonse has lived in Belgium for years but, having only recently arrived in Windhoek, is very much an outsider. Verbeke cleverly portrays the closely interlinked village and I could imagine similar places I have known. Everyone knows what everyone else is up to so, for some people there, Alphonse being disconnected and neutral is a relief. They unburden their problems on his shoulders with a seemingly bizarre sense of abandon. Others however react only to the colour of his skin because Alphonse is black. It took me quite a while to pick up on this because I was attributing Windhoek standoffishness to his newness. It wasn't until racism was obviously pointed out as their primary motive that I realised.
In several ways the novel Thirty Days reminded me of the film the Intouchables. Alphonse is a lone black face in the same way as Driss and undue weight (in my opinion) is given to his love of dancing. Thirty Days starts out with a pleasant humour too although, as can be guessed from the synopsis, the story takes darker turns. Alphonse was difficult for me to pin down as a character because he is often seen through the way people around him react to him. I liked his elderly neighbour Willem. Through Willem's obsession for the tirailleurs senegaleses, WW1 soldiers conscripted from several African colonies, we learn that hundreds of black men were welcomed into this part of Belgium a century before, but as poorly equipped infantry soldiers whose names weren't even written correctly on their gravestones.
Thirty Days is an engaging novel set in a part of Europe I wasn't previously aware of so I was interested to explore it literarily. Verbeke tells a good story, intertwining her ideas well and I enjoyed reading this book.