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I read this book as part of the excellent Brommer Op Zee series in which the author adds comments and questions to the book. When I started, I thought, 'not another book of a childhood made miserable by an extreme reformed Protestant upbringing'. There has been quite enough literary misery on that topic without yet another volume to add to the pile. Why on earth did they choose that? But I quickly discovered that this book is quite different. For a start, there is a lot of humour. The children are happy quite a lot of the time, they are not always good, and they don't experience their religion as oppressive. What is nice about this book is that it actually allows you to understand and appreciate that community rather than just confirming prejudices. The extra comments from the author were also interesting and added useful information about her writing process.

This author is from the southwest of our country where I lived a great deal of my childhood. In 2009 I learned from a television show that she had written a book about a conservative reformed farmer's family, about their culture and traditions in Zeeland. more