
Shadow Child

fact: the writer's daughter died a few weeks after being born, and (as with any normal father) inflicted so much emotional damage on him that he wrote this, in an effort to explain it.
before writing this, he had been a declared enemy of autobiographical works and i understood that he has been blamed for writing Shadow Child, because it's exactly that. i say there's a fine line between a book being an autobiography and a book being the expression of an experience the author went through.. and Thomese stands firmly on the expression side. this is not autobiographical, at most it's based on truth and wrote for evidencing the truth, as he writes what is real for him... even if it's the shadows.
what happens is Isa, his baby girl, dies soon after birth. this event, which to a spectator seems a common thing to happen and also a bit cliche to start and obsess about, has a completely different toll on the man going through it. we see it as an awful thing, as a tragedy. he experiences it as one.
through all the short bursts of emotion, because that is how the text is structured, you feel more and more the sadness, the measure of pain he found is possible to withstand, the quiet loss of one little, not even started life. but, even though the book is based on a real, tangible fact that the writer went through, you can't help but notice the vision he has of the world. the sharpness of his eyes when he studies anything. the correctness of his thoughts, the lucid view. the value.
it's simply one of those books where you feel the man behind the work, as a real presence, with his face's contour right under the white, thin sheet of paper, looking at you, studying you, and making you want to ask yourself if you would do the same as he did.
one thing that remained in me as a very powerful impression from this book is the fact that after his daughter goes, death is in him, where she, the little one, should have been. and he once again adjusts to life, but with this blackness in him that occupies a once sacred space. it's a scary, but beautiful image. for me.