Childhood

Reviews / Votes

Profoundly unsettling and haunt[s] the mind for long afterwards * Sunday Times, Books of the Year * These two posthumously published novellas by the Dutch writer Gerard Reve, skilfully translated by Sam Garrett, show he was capable of enormous and often unsettling power * Observer * Reve [has the ability]... to wring menace out of things left unsaid * Daily Mail * In a distinctive voice that captures childish incomprehension while still conveying what is missed by the still immature mind, the two works collected in Childhood are dark and even unpleasant, but both strong and impressive * Asymptote Journal * Praise for The Evenings -- .. * .. * A masterpiece... What can I say that will put this book where it belongs, in readers' hands and minds?... Reve keeps the reader breathless right through to the grand finale -- Tim Parks * Guardian * A masterwork of comic pathos... one of the finest studies of youthful malaise ever written... Should cause many readers to revise their opinions of The Catcher in the Rye. In all fairness to Salinger, The Evenings is so much better -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * I was also pleased to see Gerard Reve's funny, poignant debut novel, The Evenings, available in English... it's like BS Johnson and Kafka wandering the crepuscular streets of 1940s Amsterdam together - in a good way -- Alex Preston * Observer Books of the Year 2016 * Gives Kafka a run for his money... gripping, often very funny... bizarre, enchanting * Big Issue * The funniest, most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written. If The Evenings had appeared in English in the 1950s, it would have become every bit as much a classic as On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye. -- Herman Koch, author of The Dinner Dark masterpiece... It is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving, middle-class parents and friends * Observer * A Meursault-in-waiting, a blank Holden Caulfield, a precursor to the kid in Iain Bank's The Wasp Factory. Very good * Evening Standard * This 1947 Dutch novel, considered the Netherlands' greatest in the 20th century... is a savage novel, full of strange, cold laughter * Daily Mail * Reve's keen eye for absurdity manages to cast the mundane in a new, albeit macabre, light * Financial Times * The Evenings is packed with the minutiae of life: luckily, the minutiae are fascinating... Reve isn't the kind of novelist to give you a straightforward answer but the journey is quite a ride * The Times * A classic of dry, dark humour... it captures a very specific flavour of ennui * Herald * Fascinates the more you read of it... A fantastic novel -- Andre van Loon * Sunday Telegraph * The novel is dark, funny, unsettling and lingers vividly in the mind. Hats off to Pushkin Press and the outstanding translator, Sam Garrett, for making this odd, orphaned masterpiece available at last to an English-speaking readership * Times Literary Supplement * It is now time for a wider audience to discover its weird textures and dark delights * The National * Unlike John Williams, Gerard Reve's work was critically acclaimed and sold exceptionally well during his lifetime. But, just like Stoner, The Evenings is brilliantly written, and has a maximum impact on the reader's soul. -- Oscar van Gelderen, the Dutch publisher who rediscovered John Williams' Stoner Gerard Reve's sardonic classic The Evenings is finally translated into English * Culturetrip * This book, an important classic in the Netherlands and long, long overdue in English, is as funny as it is peculiar. Reve really deserves more attention in the Anglophone world -- Lydia Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize