My Heavenly Favorite

The unsettling latest from International Booker Prize winner Rijneveld (for The Discomfort of Evening) portrays a middle-aged man’s obsession with a farmer’s daughter. Kurt, a 49-year-old veterinarian, addresses his narration to the 14-year-old girl, referred to only as his “heavenly favorite,” while he is in prison for sexually abusing her. Recollecting their time together, Kurt rationalizes his abuse by claiming he’s the first man to see the girl as an adult. The bulk of the narrative dramatizes his abuse of her, which begins when he molests her in a movie theater. He also addresses her struggles with deciding whether she wants to be a boy, and asks: “Who are you now, the bird, the Frog or the otter?” In Kurt’s mind, an injured bird symbolizes the loss of the girl’s innocence due to menstruation, and the Frog, a reference to a boy with a “handsome face” who’d kissed her, embodies her masculine aspirations. After Kurt dissects an otter in front of her, she takes his knife and castrates the specimen, then holds up its penis bone “like a trophy” and asks him to “dissect” her. What follows can be a little murky, as Kurt questions whether he’s dreaming up some of what he remembers, but it’s clear that he rapes her, and that she later attempts suicide. Despite the dark subject matter, the novel’s unrelenting pace and single-paragraph structure entrance. This striking chronicle of delusion is hard to shake. (Mar.)