Dutch writer Jente Posthuma's quirky, bittersweet novel People with No Charisma (debuting in the Netherlands in 2016 but her second novel in the U.S.), traces the ripples that grief and ill mental health send through a young woman's life.
A dozen short, episodic chapters present snapshots from a neurotic existence. Although it doesn't occur until the final chapter, the unnamed narrator's mother's death from cancer colors everything. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy derailed her narcissistic mother's acting ambitions and caused her Jehovah's Witness parents to excommunicate her. Though her mother had once starred in a police procedural, she didn't work again until the narrator was eight--and then, just a bit part as a "whore" in a production of Faust. As a child, the narrator was convinced her mother's aborted career was her fault. The feeling that she could never live up to her mother's beauty and charisma follows the narrator into adulthood as she attempts to write a novel, finds a partner, and becomes a mother herself.
Posthuma (What I'd Rather Not Think About) excels at exploring family dynamics and the aftermath of bereavement. The narrator's father runs a mental institution but struggles with alcoholism and depression. He can't seem to offer his daughter anything more than his standard advice to patients: "to schedule my daily activities into time slots." Despite the melancholy subject matter, the tone is light and the prose and incidents idiosyncratic. It's touching that, even 30 years on, the narrator and her father still memorialize her mother. Deadpan humor meets heartfelt emotion, making this perfect for readers of Patricia Lockwood and Jennette McCurdy. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck