Dutch fiction set on Bird Island

Submitted: 1st September 2022

Vogeleiland

A book in Dutch. One of the first I have read all the way through in a long while. My Dutch (picked up when living in Belgium) is a bit rusty but I wanted to get it back. What better way than with a good book that’s not in English so I couldn’t cheat?

Bird Land is about a young girl Marianne who runs away from home at the tender age of 15. Years later, her sister still cant’ get over the fact her sister is still missing. She heads out to Spain to get away from it all. Then, she finds that her sister may indeed be living on the very strange and extremely inhospitable Bird Island where no-one is thought to live.

BookTrail the locations in Vogeleiland

Boarding Pass Information : Vogeleiland

Destination : Bird Island (Netherlands)

Author guide: Marion Pouw

Genre: Literary fiction

Food and drink to accompany: Nothing bird-like for obvious reasons

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BookTrail the locations in Vogeleiland

A novel to transport you to a very remote island

I am a sucker for books set on islands, very remote places and with surreal stories surrounding them. Would this be a tricky read in Dutch? Well, once I got used to the style and vocab, not at all althougth I did lean a few choice words by the end that are going to be tricky to get into everyday conversation.

This is a very unusual novel but one I found compelling. Marianne and Nicole were great characters if not a bit odd. Marianne runs away fron what she considers her boring life when she meets a much older man. She effectively sees a way out when she meets Berend. They decide to run away together but life has an unexpected twist for them. Enter another interesting character called Pup. There’s someone who will have an effect on everyone….all on Bird Island.

What I really loved about this novel was the way Bird Island came to life. It’s a small and not really very well-known Dutch island but in this novel, it’s so much more. It’s magical and ethereal, suspect and unusual, unique and attractive. The author has brought it to life yet made it her own. It’s a very spiritual and quiet place yet I found some of the time I was there, left me feeling uncertain and uncomfortable.

The cover is what really drew me in. At first sight, it’s a face but then if you look closely, the nose jis made up of birds and the mouth is the island of the title. That really sums up the novel for me – it’s not what you think when you first look at it.