This is Jente Posthuma\u2019s first novel, but it is being published in English after her second novel received international acclaim. I like to read things in order, but this isn\u2019t really about me. This is about People with No Charisma, which you should read.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Within this novel \u2014 until she herself becomes a wife and mother \u2014 the unnamed protagonist speaks to us with a genderless, at times masculine narrative voice, which contrasts the complex femininity of her mother. In this, we feel the shadow of the mother\u2019s expectations, the chasm of their differences. The main strength of the text is its atmospheric complexity, and the deftness with which it handles this. You can feel scenes coming from chapters away. Short, simple sentences change the way we read every line that follows. Each scene of the novel opens like a present, ending with a final line that ties it up like a bow. The process of reading is much like the unbearable, ceaseless onslaught of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I read a lot of this novel in the park next to university. While I read the first few chapters, there was a man sitting, eyes closed, facing the sun. He sat there for a long time. The sun, heat, and fire exist in this novel differently to how they exist in real life. The mother is obsessed with tanning her legs in the sun. The daughter likes to be in the shade. Since the mother died, the father heats things by microwave only: reheating or defrosting, never cooking. The family used to live near a pyromaniac who smoked cigarettes and burned his family\u2019s house to the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The world of this book opens as the world parents construct for their children. This world is one where an eight year old goes alone to the theatre to see her mother\u2019s sex scene in Faust. Where a child is told to exude charisma.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Memories are told with distance, with a small, thoughtful smile. The adults who once made up our world are observed through new eyes, now that we are older. There is a darkness to this process. Humour, too. The prose is sparse and it\u2019s hard to describe why passages which, if quoted here, would be bleakly depressing, are comforting in their intense, considered honesty. It\u2019s something to do with the context of the whole novel that envelops such passages; the thing about novels that makes reviewing them much more difficult than recommending them. The man is still sitting in the park, eyes closed, doing nothing but being in the sun. I\u2019m writing the review as I read, and as I\u2019m doing all this he\u2019s sitting. Some girls are giggling nearby. One of them has dyed red hair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGod watched from a distance in his white disco suit. Why doesn\u2019t he do anything, I thought\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
In several memories, the protagonist\u2019s mother is holding Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag while walking on the beach. It\u2019s a photograph or video of her, that\u2019s why the memory is so specific. Against Interpretation ends with the line, \u201cIn place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.\u201d I wish Posthuma had included a specific line from the essay in her novel, so I would be clearer on what the novel was actually saying and actually meant and thus felt more secure in my interpretation of it. There is another line in the essay where Sontag says \u201cWe must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.\u201d Shying away from a direct interpretation, I think those lines have something to do with the novel. Why else would she reference the essay, if it didn\u2019t have meaning? A nudge in the direction of meaning, that\u2019s all I hope for. But I digress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The novel is sort of about grief, in that it is about someone\u2019s life, and grief is inherent to life. Posthuma writes something interesting and new about both topics, life, and grief. I looked up and the sun-man was gone. He had been there for seven hours. This is autofiction. The book feels like a secret. This novel makes you feel seen, as though your more intelligent self is telling you jokes about your own life in a way only you can. At least, it made me feel like that. I actually don\u2019t know you. Maybe things will be different for you.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother hated it when I called her a liar. She said it felt like the ground falling away beneath her feet. Which is why I decided to believe all her lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
People With No Charisma was published by Scribe on 29th July 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is Jente Posthuma\u2019s first novel, but it is being published in English after her second novel received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-35815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}