With each novel, Jan Siebelink lays a new piece of the puzzle of his childhood

At Bringing debt Jan Siebelink returns to his familiar Sievez family, adding a new chapter to the story of their nursery's downfall.

Ever since his biggest success novel Kneeling on a bed of pansies writer Jan Siebelink regularly returns to his characters Hans and Margje Sievez, their son Ruben, and especially to their nursery in Velp. Siebelink's new novel Bringing debt is a story with familiar ingredients: the hard-working, devout parents; the lushly flowering nursery as a symbol of (lost) paradise; Ruben, who tries to keep the family together, and father Hans, who falls under the spell of a strict religious faction, who, on his far too early deathbed, definitively drives a wedge between the family members. Bringing debt sheds new light on the demise of the nursery. For Hans' religious frenzy was not the only cause.

At his 84^ste birthday, Ruben is irrevocably flooded with memories of the past, and of what his own part was in the expulsion from paradise. To solve his parents' money worries, Ruben asked their rich neighbour Delgijer for help as a teenager. The latter offered Hans and Margje to buy a piece of fallow land from them so that he could build a manage for his daughters there. With hesitation, Hans and Margje had agreed - a fatal mistake.

For Delgijer showed himself to be an untrustworthy snake, and the presented shiny apple turned out to be a devious ruse. For the selfish rich man did not build a small manage for his children, but a huge sports hall with bar. Drunken sportsmen roamed the grounds of the nursery, soiled the place and trampled the seedbeds of scabiosa and other special plants. Thus Ruben's act of love heralded the beginning of the end. Hans, Margje, Ruben and his younger brother Tom are each suffering from the situation in their own way and are also trying to cope with it in their own way.

wistful

Bringing debt is a wistful tale of guilt and penance, opportunity and fate. With each new novel, Siebelink puts a small piece of the big puzzle of this comprehensive life story based on his own childhood. He is a master at painting a mood and landscape. And of the everyday, plodding life of small citizens, who work very hard but for whom a better financial situation nevertheless seems out of the question, because the rich always come out on top. A story that becomes even more meaningful in light of the current economic situation in the Netherlands.

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Jan Siebelink, Bringing debt (176 p.), De Bezige Bij, €23.99