Why a Booktrail?
A YA novel that really makes Brussels and Tervuren seem really dark and dangerous. Evocative of all the dark and cobbled streets!
Silent Saturday
What you need to know before your trail
Seventeen-year-old Veerle is frustrated with life in Brussels. When she has a chance encounter with a hidden society, whose members illegally break into unoccupied buildings around the city, she soon finds herself entering a world of excitement. However, danger is not far behind.
When one of the society’s founding members disappears, Veerle soon finds what danger really means. She suspects foul play but this is only the start of a nightmare world that she is drawn into, and one day an old foe emerges from the shadows…
Travel Guide
For seventeen-year-old Veerle life is worse than boring and having a rather neurotic mother doesn’t help either. Most mothers worry about their child’s safety but not like Claudine! Veerle also has to interpret and look after her mother in other ways too so to break free into the outside world into a hidden world is an attractive concept.
Brussels is dark and mysterious and gothic like at the best of times but here the gothic grandeur of the city is evoked in many ways.
The air is still, the dim lights of the cobbled streets glowing on the paving stones below when one night Veerle decides to investigate a flickering light. It seems to be in an abandoned building….already the sense of chill and foreboding fills the air and we’re not even inside yet!And even the tram rides (trams being a major way of getting round the city for real) are creepy.
“The tram had left the woods behind and was now passing a large park. A few minutes later they passed the tram museum. After the stop known as Chien Vert – the green dog – the left the parkland behind and the streets of Brussels closed in upon them.”
When Veerle becomes involved with the Koekoeken, or Cuckoos, the secret society dedicated to breaking into empty properties, this is quite a premise for a book and had us enthralled. It’s the thrill of the forbidden and the sense of adventure that pervades the story. The atmosphere is chillingly good – creepy and eerily drawn characters! The evocation of the everyday life in another country always fascinating – Apparently in Belgium, church bells don’t ring on Easter Saturday as it’s traditional for the adults tell the children that the bells have to fly to Rome in order to collect the Easter eggs. True or not, that’s a good sense of place and evocative of the time and culture.
The thrill of what is forbidden is very enticing indeed.
Where Next?
