Wolf is Kristien Hemmerechts' first novel since her non-fiction book about breast cancer, and it is about rage. What it's like to be furious, the Belgian writer knows all about that. "When I had breast cancer, I experienced intense feelings of aggression."
Why is it that some people who have experienced a trauma or tragedy can give it a place, while others cannot? That question has occupied Belgian writer Kristien Hemmerechts (62) for years. In fact, ever since writing Ann (2008), her book about a woman with an incest past and chronic anorexia, who was eventually euthanised. ''I found it confronting that she failed to give a place to her past and eventually succumbed to it. She couldn't let it go.''
Terrorist attacks
With the attacks in her homeland in recent years, the writer saw other examples of what it can mean when anger does not find a healthy outlet or place. ,,There are so many people who feel great anger towards society and their fellow human beings and as a result take an extreme path: they commit murder or choose the extreme right or jihadism. So how to deal with grief, with anger? I think that's an important question."
Angry protagonist
This fact inspired her to write Wolf, a novel with an angry protagonist. Vladimir Ulychenko is a lonely, tormented fifty-year-old consumed by anger. The seeds for this lie in his childhood; his grandmother Baba took him away from his far too young mother the day after he was born and raised him with a coercive hand. He finds it hard to stomach the early death of a childhood friend, the discovery that his grandmother was not his mother and the fact that all sorts of other family relationships were more mendacious than thought. With each new lie in his environment during his adult life, the fire of anger flares up further and further. His rage, which dwells in his chest like a wolf, cuts him off from his feelings and prevents him from loving others.
After people around him warn him that he might kill someone out of anger, he seeks help from a therapist. When this Lieselotte - for whom he is beginning to have feelings - tells him about a kind of spiritual hotel where she likes to go because people are only allowed to be nice there, Vladimir decides to give himself a short holiday as well. But it soon turns out to be disastrous. When the owner of the centre and he are driving to the bakery, their car skids on black ice. The accident reveals that Lieselotte, who was out for a walk, has been decapitated. However, the disastrous accident also brings Vladimir something beautiful: a tentative love blossoms between him and one of the other guests.
Sympathy
It was quite exciting, says Hemmerechts, to choose an angry character. ,,A reader likes a nice protagonist better, and empathises with him faster. I have that myself; if I am annoyed by a character, I sometimes even get annoyed by the book. In this day and age, people quickly zap away. So that was my challenge: how do I keep readers on board? That's why I strived to make you feel sympathy for Vladimir by making it palpable that he is a hurt soul. So that you understand where his anger comes from and that it is also somewhat justified, because he has been dealt with in an unfair way.''
Decapitation
Wolf is fiction, but Hemmerechts didn't have to make much up. ,,This book is partly based on someone I know, who also carries a past with him and finds it hard to leave the anger about it behind. When you suffer a hurt, and then another and another, you can feel like the world is against you. I have actually put together pieces from the lives of all kinds of people I know. Even the accident Vladimir gets into happened exactly like that, including the beheading of a walker. I wouldn't have dared write that down that way otherwise either, it's so extreme and bizarre.''
Eventful life
Through her eventful life - Hemmerechts lost two children and a husband, and developed breast cancer a few years ago - the writer herself knows what it is like to be angry at what happens to you in life. ,,When I had breast cancer, I experienced intense feelings of aggression. I was SO angry, especially about the attitude of the healthy fellow man, who has no idea what it means to have cancer. After my husband, poet Herman de Coninck, died, I told a lecture that I felt a lot of anger. I was angry because he was dead and I had been widowed. Afterwards, a woman came up to me who was very angry about that - so she was angry about my anger. That's absurd, isn't it? You can't be angry with someone because of what they are feeling, can you? After all, you can't order your emotions around. Telling me not to feel that anger was not enough to actually stop feeling it.''
Taboo
Being angry is a social taboo, because it is seen as something negative. And anger can also be very dangerous or destructive, as Vladimir threatens. This is precisely why it is important not to censor, Hemmerechts believes. When I was little, you got a slap on the wrist if you were angry. Being angry was not allowed. But if someone is not allowed to feel anger, they are going to look for another way out. I think that is what is going on with terrorists. These are often people who feel isolated and have nowhere to go with their anger. I think it is important to find out why someone is angry. To listen carefully. Because otherwise someone feels excluded, not recognised, not heard. For example, could it be that young people who cut themselves are actually very angry? And that their self-mutilation is an expression of that? Suicide, too, is often a form of aggression that turns someone against themselves."
Inner peace
But the angry person should also think about themselves, she believes. ,,I think many people make a fallacy. They assume that redemption has to come from outside, that someone has to give them love or understanding. But you have to do it yourself; you have to break down those prison walls yourself and start loving. A key sentence in the novel is that Vladimir realises that loving is more important than being loved. Many people are looking for love. But people are actually looking for happiness and inner peace. To that end, you have to love yourself and others.''
Acceptance
The main key, however, according to Hemmerechts, lies in acceptance of what life brings or has brought. ''I used to think that life should be just. At some point I realised that that thought is nonsensical; life doesn't owe you anything. But it took some time to come to that realisation. Besides, we live in a society where we want to be in control of everything. Cancer or death is a confrontation with loss of control. We are not good at coping with that; we want to be able to solve everything, direct every aspect of our lives, even death. That is an illusion. But I'm 62 now and getting older makes it easier to accept what comes your way. You can see things more in perspective and put things into better perspective. I find it a lot easier to be older than young.''
Good to know
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
