As someone who enjoyed "Tampa" by Alissa Nutting, I was curious about this novel. Ultimately, it was not for me, but I think some people will enjoy it if they enjoy "twisted" novels about taboo topics. The non-American perspective on this type of character was fascinating, but it did make me feel a bit sick at some points.

Much like his award winning novel Discomfort of the Evening, My Heavenly Favorite is deeply discomforting, disturbing, uncomfortable to read and at times vile. I can't say that I enjoyed reading it, because enjoyment is not the right word, but I truly couldn't put it down. The writing is incredible and the journey the unreliable narrator takes us is worth embarking on. It's a dark and frenzied stream of consciousness of a middle aged vet , his desires, fantasies, fears and lofty ponderings , mostly related to his grooming of a 14 year old girl, a deeply troubled child whose family is struggling in the wake of a siblings death and absence of their mother. All set against a grim background of a village in the Dutch Bible Belt. More than just the manipulations of a perverted mind though, this is a book about the effects of trauma and grief on all the families involved.

EEEEK, this one makes the hairs on your neck stand up. In the same vain of Humbert-Humbert in Lolita, our male protagonist, Kurt, offers his account of how he groomed, manipulated and abused the 14-year-old daughter of a farmer whose cows he tended as a veterinarian.

So many things about this book are disturbing and shocking, it really comes with a factor of disgust. The prose often mirror's Kurt's work as a veterinarian, blending his sexual obsession with this young girl with imagery connected with death and his own experience of trying to heal wounded animals, and bringing them to their graves.

The book also has many pop culture references which I appreciated - it was undeniable how the atmosphere was heavy with American culture in music, books, and movies. In contrast, heavy topics such as Hitler and 9/11, references to biblical text, and the underlying guilt that survivors may often feel painted a devastating portrait of the trauma that was being perpetuated to this young girl.

Although I can't offer that I enjoyed reading this book, I have a lot of respect for the author's who are able to mix the concrete with the surrealistic realities at play. It's taking a slice of what's ordinary and creating something other-worldly, extremely impressive prose and adaptation of language - it makes you feel everything really viscerally and left me feeling awed and queasy. BIG FEELING.

My only critique: it's hard to sit in a character like Kurt's head for almost 300 pages - although that's relatively short for a book, it felt a liiiiittle bit too long for my tastes. 4 Stars.

My Heavenly Favorite chronicles a 49 year old man’s predatory obsession with a 14 year old girl he encounters through his work as a vet on her father’s farm. The infatuation and obsession play out solely from his perspective with prose that often feels like a fever dream where the line between what he perceives as reality is constantly blurred and the perspective of his “heavenly favorite” is recounted through his unreliable lens.

There is no way to tiptoe around the fact that this book is disturbing. For some the content will be too challenging (please check trigger warnings). While this was a difficult read, I see value in the discomfort; it creates space to explore and affirm values and beliefs and the line between right and wrong. At one point Rijneveld writes about the “falling man” photo from 9/11, an event that plays prominently in a novel where loss and death are a constant presence. The text states that rather than looking to see who the man was, you should be looking at who you were yourself when looking and what you felt. The discomfort is a catalyst for self reflection and awareness and for me this is one of the main takeaways from this frequently uncomfortable novel.

It was interesting to see questions of right and wrong explored through the juxtaposition of the “normal” and “typical” obsessions of a teen girl with those of a predatory abuser. Both characters are portrayed as having similar patterns of obsessive thought, yet one is acceptable and one is not. The novel looks at the stories we tell ourselves and how we can convince ourselves to believe things that aren’t true. The predator has self awareness that what he is doing is wrong but finds ways and reasons to justify continuing the behavior.

We only hear the child’s perspective through the man’s narration. It is impossible to know how reliable he is in recounting her thoughts and experiences with their interactions. There is no doubt this perpetrator is manipulating the child’s trauma and uncertainty about her gender identity to his advantage.

I found places where I could be empathetic toward the predator. He shared stories of his own trauma and at times demonstrated what seemed to be care and concern for the girl. This is not an excuse for the abhorrent behavior but created a window to explore how someone’s circumstances can contribute to their failings. At one point it is said that even inside the darkest person there was once sunlight, and in another place that there must be something humane in a person who loved animals. Despite the deplorable behavior and actions of the main character things are not always black and white.

The writing in this book hit a sweet spot for me. It flows in a way that pulls me in like a current and its form that includes long sentences with minimal breaks gives support to the blurring between fact and fiction and the fever dream quality. There is not a lot of plot here, so this is best for people who appreciate repetition, a lengthy internal monologue, and impeccable writing. Rijneveld is a master at their craft. This will be another top read of the year and I hope to see it on the #InternationalBookerPrize list next week.

Thank you @graywolfpress @netgalley for the #gifted eARC

My Heavenly Favorite is one of those books that is hard to review because I can't exactly say that I enjoyed reading it, nor would it be an easy novel to recommend. That being said, it was masterfully translated and, for lack of a better descriptor, effective. I know many readers will balk at the stream-of-consciousness style, but for me it was the only thing that made such an unsettling narrative approachable, a constant reminder that the narrator is in his own head and not to be trusted.

I doubt I will ever revist this novel, but I have no doubt that it will stick with me for quite some time.

A very uncomfortable and disturbing read from an incredibly talented author. The comparisons to Lolita will be obvious but Rijneveld transgresses those boundaries to create something new and equally demented. This book will simply be too activating for individuals who have experienced any kind of sexual or psychological abuse. And in all honesty it’s not even very pleasant to read. But the author is so talented it’s hard to stop. Did we need another disturbing novel like Lolita? Perhaps not. But if anyone was going to create a work as profoundly disturbing, it came from the right person.

Thank you to #NetGalley for advanced copy.

#MyHeavenlyFavorite

This is an intimidating novel. Not just because of its subject matter - a 49 yo father of two falls “in love” with a 14 yo girl- but because of the blocks of text that face you when you open the book. There are as many paragraphs as there are chapters. Some sentences are pages long.

The prose carried me along though. It was almost hypnotic. I was trapped in this man’s mind and I couldn't shake him off. Rijneveld uses the language of farming as a counterpoint to what we’re experiencing to great effect. The atmosphere is gross and visceral. I could see every movement, I could hear every squelch.

There are intertextual references to literature, movies, and music throughout (I’ll never look at a copy of Proust the same way again - iykyk) but the biggest is obviously Lolita. While that novel can be seen throughout these pages, I have to say that both characters, especially “Little Bird”, are far more developed here. While we see Bird perform with a band, go on dates, and hang out with friends, we also see her deal with grief, abandonment, a mental disorder (she has conversations with both Hitler and Freud), and gender dysphoria. “Kurt” is a veterinarian with a wife and kids, who is trying
to recapture his stolen youth through Bird and is also struggling to decipher what is real or not. Even as I write this I have to question everything he says in his ‘confession’ - the past and present, and the real and imagined are so intertwined that it's hard to tease it out.

This was a fascinating look at obsession and worship. I'm still wrapping my head around how both 9/11 and the hoof and mouth outbreak of the same year relate.

I think this deserves to be in next month’s International Booker longlist.

I struggled with this. The run on sentences were very off-putting. The dialog itself was juvenile. Nothing worked for me but I’m sure someone else will love it.

An unnerving, weird, and uncomfortable read that I could not seem to put down. My Heavenly Favorite is based on the ever-famous book Lolita that follows an abusive and predatory "relationship" between a young girl and a much older man. This follows an older father working on a farm who strikes up an all-consuming obsession with his boss' daughter, who happens to be fourteen. A muddled and confusing yet poetic writing style aids to the disgusting subject matter. It was both hard to watch this story unfold and also addicting to read about because of the author's ability to write so effortlessly and beautifully.

Ooof. That was hard to read…
I am really thankful to Graywolf Press, Dreamscape Media, Netgalley, and Lucas Rijneveld for granting me advanced digital and audio access to this TOUGH read before it hits shelves on March 5, 2024. The premise of this reminded me of Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka, where we heard from the first person view of the perpetrator, reminiscing on his time before and during his crimes, trying to claim his innocence or explain away his wrongdoings… As the reader, we don’t really fall for his words and explanations and rather get so sickened by his actions and thoughts, that it makes it hard to empathize with him.

Our main character enters an intimately inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl, pushing her to be sexually active with him throughout the course of several months, pulling out all of the stops in the way that a pedophile would. We never hear anything from the minor on her feelings or thoughts about this relationship, only the perpetrator and his mentally ill way of thinking.

I feel the writer did an incredible job of depicting that level of disgust in how predators seek out their prey, and I will warn you that this was incredibly hard to listen to from the perspective of our villain, but you get an inside glimpse into the madness at play.

I really enjoyed Lucas Rijneveld's other novel, The Discomfort of Evening, but this one was too strange for me to get through. The formatting/stylistic choice of having very few periods or line breaks was rough for me — there are just giant walls of text and stream-of-consciousness thoughts separated only by commas, which hurt my brain and forced me to stop at 15%. I was not enjoying the style or the story at that point, so unfortunately I chose to DNF this one. Maybe I'll go back another time, because the prose itself was lovely!

author of THE DISCOMFORT OF EVENING, lucas rijneveld’s new novel MY HEAVENLY FAVORITE (trans. Michele Hutchison) once again explores grief and mental illness in an unforgettable narrative.

MY HEAVENLY FAVORITE reads as a feverish confession from a middle-aged veterinarian that tends to local livestock along the dutch countryside. one farm in particular houses a family with a 14-year-old girl with whom the veterinarian develops a perverted obsession.

the novel tracks the veterinarian’s downward spiral, not only into his disturbing fixation on the girl, but on the haunting nightmares of his own childhood abuse and the traumas witnessed in his line of work.

the novel also illustrates the girl’s fraught adolescence and mental illness, characterized through music lyrics, classic novels, and hallucinatory conversations with freud and hitler.

MY HEAVENLY FAVORITE is equally disturbing and poetic. rijneveld’s hypnotic prose along with hutchison’s masterful translation creates a horrifying reading experience i couldn’t turn away from. rijneveld suspends the reader in the abject yet caresses with gorgeously crafted prose. despite its unrelenting content, MY HEAVENLY FAVORITE succeeds in casting light to the horrors of trauma when left to fester and repeat itself.

i only wish the ending held the same magnitude of THE DISCOMFORT OF EVENING, which has one of my favorite conclusions. i yearned for a bit more resolution, particularly from the girl’s storyline. nevertheless, this book will stick with me, and solidifies rijneveld as one of my favorite authors.


4.5/5 ⭐️

This is a very unusual book, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I recognize that the writing is very evocative and beautiful at times, but the stream-of-consciousness style was, for me, tiring and difficult to follow. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.