The Evenings, by Gerard Reve

I had never heard of Gerard Reve, I picked this book at the Paagman bookshop in The Hague from the shelf of Dutch authors, because it looked interesting. And it really is, actually it's a masterpiece. A kind of existential novel, that kept reminding me of The Catcher in the Rye and La Nausée - the protagonist is more like Holden Caulfield than Roquentin, but the dread existential feelings evoked in me much the same feelings of when I read La Nausée, ages ago.

It is set in 1946 in Amsterdam, shortly after WWII, the war is hardly mentioned, but yet its shadow looms large over all the narrative, whether in the austerity of the living conditions of the characters or in the constant nightmares of the protagonist. The said protagonist is a 23 year-old man, likeable and relatable to all of us that have faced the meaninglessness of life when we lack a purpose. Frits is a keen if apparently detached observer, he tells somewhat tasteless jokes, plays mindgames with his friends, feels mad at his father's eating manners and his mother's clumsiness and vulgarity, and yet one feels he's not that aloof - in several scenes one sees that he actually loves his clueless parents and his somewhat condescending friends.

But basically he doesn't know what to do with his life, so the filling of time becomes a terrible chore, and that's mostly apparent in the evenings of the title, when he has to endure the time passing. He watches his parents, he visits his friends, he muses over his body. It feels painful, even if the writing is always slightly ironic and amusing, as when one eschews suffering by not taking oneself too seriously. The main question is - how to live life without a purpose? There is no inherent or objective meaning in life, we must find and build one to ourselves, and sometimes we just don't, and how much I relate to that.