The Edges by Angelo Tijssens

 

The cover gives a good
indication of what we are in
store for - this is not a jolly read

Angelo Tijssens started out as an actor, appearing in several films, before migrating to writing. He has numerous screen plays to his name, most of them well-regarded and having won numerous awards. The Edges is his first novel, and was originally published in Flemish as De randen. It has since been translated into many languages.

Full disclosure: It's been a fair while since I read The Edges. I am very behind on my posts, as such the details are not as fresh in my mind as I would like, and the review will be considerably shorter.

The Edges follows an unnamed protagonist who returns to the small Belgian town in which he grew up, following the death of his mother. Here he meets up with an ex-lover and wanders through the memories (not many of them pleasant) of growing up gay in a small town.

Tijssens writes with a fine touch, with much left unexplained, but what we are shown fleshes out the protagonist and his childhood. It is not surprising to learn the novel is semi-autobiographical.

I imagine the similarity between the man on the
cover and Tijessens was deliberate.

My only real complaint is that it is too short, at 100 pages this is firmly
in novella territory, but the text and plot flows easily and seemlessly, so that it is over before it has hardly had chance to begin, and is more of a short story. I felt like we needed to be taken a bit further on the protagonist's journey, or to go a bit more deeply.

And so, when judged against other novels, it falls slightly short of the full five stars, though I would heartily recommend it, and look forward to more (hopefully longer form) offerings from Tijssens. 

★★★★☆