Keynote
“A tour de force of transgressive imagination” (The Guardian UK) by the winner of the International Booker Prize
Book Title
My Heavenly Favorite
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- “Horrifying and brilliant. . . . However sickening My Heavenly Favorite is, it’s certainly an example of literary mastery.”—Francesca Peacock, Los Angeles Review of Books
Body
A confession, a lament, a mad gush of grief and obsession, My Heavenly Favorite is the remarkable and chilling successor to Lucas Rijneveld’s international sensation, The Discomfort of Evening. It tells the story of a veterinarian who visits a farm in the Dutch countryside where he becomes enraptured by his “Favorite”—the farmer’s daughter. She hovers on the precipice of adolescence, and longs to have a boy’s body. The veterinarian seems to be a tantalizing possible path out from the constrictions of her conservative rural life.
Narrated after the veterinarian has been punished for his crimes, Rijneveld’s audacious, profane novel is powered by the paradoxical beauty of its prose, which holds the reader fast to the page. Rijneveld refracts the contours of the Lolita story with a kind of perverse glee, taking the reader into otherwise unimaginable spaces. An unflinching depiction of abjection and a pointed excavation of taboos and social norms, My Heavenly Favorite “confirms Rijneveld’s singular, deeply discomforting talent” (Financial Times UK).
Narrated after the veterinarian has been punished for his crimes, Rijneveld’s audacious, profane novel is powered by the paradoxical beauty of its prose, which holds the reader fast to the page. Rijneveld refracts the contours of the Lolita story with a kind of perverse glee, taking the reader into otherwise unimaginable spaces. An unflinching depiction of abjection and a pointed excavation of taboos and social norms, My Heavenly Favorite “confirms Rijneveld’s singular, deeply discomforting talent” (Financial Times UK).
List Price
$18.00
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About the Author
Credit: Jeroen Jumelet
Praise
- “You feel borne along by the flow of language, the language of flow, knowing you’re supposed to feel like this seamless stream, which suddenly you’re drinking, goes down too easy—and ‘you,’ referring most often to the favorite but also to the judging reader, are the narrator’s primary addressee.”—Katie Kadue, Bookforum
- “Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favorite is a novel of exquisite discomfort and delicious poetry. Rijneveld writes with peerless moral courage and a sheer delight in the abject that we must each face in ourselves. This book unsettled me even as it made me laugh and gasp. I’m in awe.”—Brandon Taylor
- “Here lies writing that is rejuvenating, glorious, brilliant. A book about obsession with prose that obsessed me from the first line. How lucky we are to be the readers of Lucas Rijneveld’s work.”—Daisy Johnson
- “It’s been a long time since a book has destroyed me like My Heavenly Favorite. Lucas Rijneveld’s genius for minute attention to the granular detail of pain, desire, fantasy, and transgression doesn’t allow for any comfortable distance between reader and protagonist. . . . Rijneveld is one of the boldest writers alive today.”—Max Porter
