A real Dutch treat

The first one that is up for review today is a Dutch book that I remember from when I was young.
Yes - It is a children's book but I found it still reads well for those who are slightly older. It is also in Dutch.

I remember it made a big impact on me as a child but before I re-read it I could not quite remember why. All I could remember that there was a hand on the front cover holding a dagger and it was about a girl dealing with some ghost or weird stuff. I was sort of right about both of these. Finding the book, re-discovering it had been a wonderful trip down memory lane for me. Plus.... being older now, I was able to read it in one Saturday afternoon rather than a week or so. Happy days!


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Het Onzichtbare Licht - Evert Hartman
This is the story of a young girl who goes through some things she does not quite understand and that sometimes scare her. Well, I would not be feeling all to chipper in the morning if I found some guy in a uniform standing at the foot of my bad in the middle of the night so I understand a little bit where she is coming from.
Leny lives in a small village where her parents run a farm. She and her two brothers get along as well as you would expect from siblings and they seem a well adjusted sort of bunch. So far so ordinary. Then we find out that Leny sometimes see things that others don't, knows things that she could have no reason of knowing and gets scared of places that look perfectly harmless. 
Coming from any child character but Leny you might think they were in need of a serious chat to a psychiatrist but Leny is such a simple and naive character that it is totally believable that she is as amazed at discovering she is "different" than you are. She is a normal young kid, about 12 or 13 and her life is filled with school, friends, cycling home in the rain and wind and helping out on the farm.
Leny's family seem to have a bit more trouble in dealing with what is happening to Leny. Her mum and dad go from kind of accepting that there may be something going on to blatant denial that the situation warrants some investigating. Perhaps with mental illness being in the family it is a natural reaction to stick your head in the sand but let's be honest here Leny's Dad... it's not gonna help anyone in the long run! And yet, Dad is the one who stands up to the priest and defends his daughter when her sanity is called into question. 
Fortunately for Leny she has a very good friend in Esther. Although Esther is not quite sure how to respond to all the strange stuff that Leny keeps coming out with, she sticks with her friend and goes with her to see a man who might be ale to help when she knows it may get her in trouble. For a brief moment little village and church politics threaten to ruin Leny's friendship with Esther but I have a feeling that the two will find a way around that. There is also the rumour that spreads about what Leny has seen in one of her visions which gets her into trouble with the locals and shows that prejudice to being different is something people from all ages are subjected to. Fortunately for Leny one of her teacher is a very clued up and understanding kind of guy and he helps put Leny on the right path to find out how she can deal with all these things that she is feeling and seeing. Turns out Leny even gains another friend in the whole process although this one is more of an internally based friend.
I think for both Leny and the reader, at times it feels like she is on her own with her best friend in getting to grips with this thing that she is going through. I think she will find her way of dealing with it and I think that that is the message the book is trying to send. It may be tough trying to figure out what is going on in your life at times but if you have your friends and your family around you then things are never as bad as they seem.

As I said, I read this book when I was young and I remember being really impressed with it. I had never heard of things like clairvoyance, psychic visions, auras or any of that. This book was probably my first encounter with those things and it opened my mind to many other things to read about that are different and weird yet wonderful in this world. If nothing else I owe it for that.
Needless to say I am very happy to have re-discovered it after all these years. It was definitely worth reading it again. Think it may only be the third book I have ever read more than once!


Title: Het Onzichtbare Licht
Author: Evert Hartman
193 pages
Lemniscaat
ISBN # 978-90-6069-504-6

Books to be read: 136
Books bought: 0 (putting this one in just as a reminder for me)