The marriage of Frits and Lina has come to an end. What happened, where did it go wrong?
Unable to share her grief and mistrust, Lina becomes increasingly withdrawn. Frits' flight into the arms of a much younger woman is doomed to failure. When Lina announces that she wants a divorce, Frits finds out that he wants nothing more than to get her back.
Because of their former life and in a heroic attempt to remain friends, they enter therapy. Unprocessed sadness, shame, disappointment and other feelings meander below the surface as well as above it through the conversations.
His absence at important moments and her silence run like a frayed thread through their lives. It becomes painfully clear that they have kept their fears, despair and sadness to themselves. The therapist gives them homework: reminisce, help each other.
Will what is said, told and lived through be enough to move forward together?
Rafels is a moving story, in which the sharp sides of sadness, shame and disappointment as well as the characters of the characters are highlighted from two perspectives.
Marianne Schenderling:
Marianne Schendeling wrote her first 'book' when she was eleven: Leiden in the Eighty Years' War. After studying History and (two years) Dutch, she attended the School of Journalism, after which she continued to sharpen her pen as a freelancer. She has published a variety of articles, reports, interviews, a non-fiction book and blogs on various subjects and ultimately, because she made this a priority, the writing of Rafels, her first novel.
General
Author
Marianne Schenderling
Editorial
Linguist: Sabine Mourits ;
Editor: Linda Crombach ;
Final editing: Inanna van den Berg
