Book of Week 18
My mother used to have a very small television made of coral red plastic. It fit right in the palm of your hand. There was a small round hole in the back. If you closed one eye and peered through the hole with the other, you could see an image on the back wall of the viewing box. You had to squint very hard to distinguish the details. Even though I knew the images by heart, I still remained curious when I pressed the button at the bottom of the box with my finger and slid the next image in front of the lens. As if something had changed in the meantime, or you would suddenly notice something you had not seen before.
While reading Someone had to do it, I felt like a child again, peeking through a peephole and allowed to scrutinize the details of other lives. In each chapter, Sanne Huysmans takes you into the perspective of a different resident in Kapelstraat, a village in Flanders. Time jumps from overgrown gardens and scrubbing tiles to winters during the war, filled with chip coats and sleeping in the straw in the hayloft. The years pass and because you move through them in waves as you read, the changes come in as you expect them: slowly and retrospectively. Moreover, the many characters have soft looks and all pay attention to something different. They wonder other things, look back or only look forward.
I thought it was a wonderful book to read. It looks for the other person’s gaze, sees where they focus, and takes you along. Through all those eyes you see the sad and beautiful of time passing. The time that allows to become wild or needs to be limited. Despite a lot of switching between characters, it doesn’t confuse. I could hardly wait to click through to the image I had previously become familiar with, to see what would happen next.
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Someone had to do it is written by Sanne Huysmans
Published by Koppernik Publishers
Nora Hendriks is a bookseller at Linnaeus Boekhandel, Middenweg 29
