A dagger through my heart

Stefaan Van Laere is a Belgian writer & journalist. He writes both fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. He is also the founder of publishing house Partizaan. The joint circulation of his books already amounts to more than 400,000 copies. This is his first book in English.

Geertrude is old and harbours feelings of resentment after a long life that wasn't always good to her.

The war, the boarding school led by stern nuns, her stiff-necked father (a brewer who collaborated with the Germans and still has secret sympathies for the nazis), a husband who doesn't understand her at all, the birth of an unwanted son: it all accumulates into a moutain of contradictory emotions and remorse.
And then she waits impatiently until the curtain falls...

The story of a woman who just is not able to love...