What I'd Rather Not Think About (2024) by Jente Posthuma

 Book Review

What I'd Rather Not Think About (2024)

by Jente Posthuma

Translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey

   The Dutch have been doing all right in the Booker International Prize this past decade. Lucas Rijneveld won back in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening which was... dark.   Now we've got another Dutch author on this years longlist- I realize by the time this post publishes we will know about the short list, but I'm writing this before that list is announced.  What I'd Rather Not Think About is a work about a pair of fraternal twins- "One" is the older twin, a gay man.  "Two" is the younger, and the narrator, a cis, straight woman. 

   Basically, One commits suicide by riding his bike directly into a canal and drowning (he leaves a note so we know it's suicide).  Such a Dutch way to kill yourself!  Two spends the rest of the book recounting her memories and trying to make sense of what, even by the standards of literary suicide, seems like a random act of self-violence.  Despite the recounting of the off-hand type of comments everyone makes at one point or another ("I wish I was dead." level stuff), there is nothing in the rest of What I'd Rather Not Think About that explains this central act- viewed, rightfully, as an act of abandonment and betrayal, by the narrator.

  Despite the dark subject matter, What I'd Rather Not Think About is a breezy read, easily tackled in an afternoon.  Doesn't seem like a Booker International Shortlist title to me.