You Have Me to Love. Jaap Robben
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BOLD, TENDER AND DISTURBING
On a remote island somewhere in the North Atlantic, a nine-year-old boy looks on helplessly as his father is swept out to sea. Consumed by guilt and paralyzed by his mother’s frantic grief, Mikael cannot bring himself to tell the truth about what happened. As the pair struggle to restore the fragile balance of their isolated lives, the young widow starts to demand the impossible of her only son.
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Praise for You Have Me to Love
‘Jaap Robben handles delicate, dangerous material with subtlety and sympathy, but also with a visionary sense of truth that is masterly and unforgettable.’
COLM TÓIBÍN
‘In this tremendous book, Robben explores isolation, guilt, mother- and childhood in the most unexpected way. Robben’s crystal clear sentences combined with his deep gaze into the flipsides of human behavior – and love – make this an unforgettable read. Run to the bookstores, people’
DORTHE NORS
‘An overwhelming debut about lost childhood innocence, You Have Me to Love can be favourably compared to Niccolò Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared and Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden. A staggering first novel: faultless in its description of a child’s inner world’
Het Parool
‘What a beautiful writer Robben is! I read the novel and was completely seduced – raw and harrowing and very moving. Robben is a powerful writer and reminds me very much of Per Petterson’
AIFRIC CAMPBELL
‘This is a bold, tender and ambivalent narrative, raw and disturbing, with moments of painful beauty: a taut narrative heavy with a convincing sense of dread’
Irish Times
‘Robben lifts you from your life and sweeps you away, with no chance of escaping. You just keep reading while you’re holding your breath. A promising novelist is born’
De Morgen
‘A gripping novel that steadily tightens its hold’
De Volkskrant
‘You Have Me to Love is a beautiful, intoxicating book full of magnificent sentences and terrific empathy’
Boekblad
‘Beautiful, just beautiful’
GERBRAND BAKKER
‘Lucid and unjudgemental, this a universal story of isolation, loneliness and tragedy. Like a record stuck in its groove, it won’t let me go’
EUROPEAN LITERATURE NETWORK
‘A small masterpiece’
Harpers Bazaar
‘Mixes the sinister with the beautiful to create something truly unique’
Blackwell’s Book Shop
‘From the very first sentence it is clear how well début novelist Jaap Robben writes. His childishly simple yet highly suggestive sentences make You Have Me to Love as stark and foreboding as the island on which it is set’
NRC Next
‘Unbelievable. A beautiful story, light for all its heaviness, written in a clear and powerful style. Robben merges grief, simplicity and isolation in a phenomenal way’
Telegraaf
‘Robben’s clear sentences and empathic use of language read like poetry: rhythmic, probing, and sonorous’
Dagblad van het Noorden
‘A beautiful novel about grief, remorse and loneliness, which excels in its level of sophistication’
Algemeen Dagblad
‘Robben shows in a sober, visual, poetic style how mother and son keep each other prisoner, unable to live either with or without each other’
Nederlands Dagblad
‘Robben is a wizard with the written word. On every page you come across sentences of no more than six or seven words that transform in your head into succinct, artful, razor-sharp films. You Have Me to Love is a true joy to read’
Boek
‘Robben’s prose is beautiful and expressive’
Hotel Boekenlust
‘In restrained and austere language, it pierces your heart directly to its core’
ZiN Magazine
‘Robben has just written himself straight into literary history’
Boekenredactie Bol.com
‘Magnificent, poetic, lonely, gruesome. And also beautifully written’
Kunststof Radio 1
‘You have those books that you can’t put down, but that you also want to savour for as long as possible because otherwise they are over too soon. You Have Me to Love by Jaap Robben is one of those books’
Boekenbijlage.nl
‘A debut that blew me away and deserves to be read by a large audience’
Boekreviews
‘You Have Me to Love to Love is an experience. The intense dialogues, potent atmospheric descriptions and near-poetic imagery make this a magnificent and powerful story that gets under your skin’
Cutting Edge
‘Wow! Not only can Jaap Robben write beautiful sentences, he also knows how to pull the punches with a fascinating story about stifling love. A literary gem’
Wegener Dagbladen
‘The accuracy with which Jaap Robben observes things – a skill which also shines in his best poems – almost hypnotizes’
Leeswolf
‘A hard and confrontational book, yet at the same time one of exceptional beauty’
Na de Lunch
‘A moving novel. Jaap Robben writes, with a clear andcontrolled pen, a story brimming with beautiful imagery’
Dutch Glory
‘A heart-breakingly beautiful book’
MAUD VANHAUWAERT
‘A direct hit’
MARCEL ROZER, De Gelderlander
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JAAP ROBBEN (1984) is a poet, playwright, performer and acclaimed children’s author. You Have Me to Love, his first novel for adults, has received international glowing reviews and is the winner of the 2014 Dutch Booksellers Award, the Dioraphte Prize, and the ANV Award for best Dutch debut. To date, the novel has sold over 50,000 copies in the Netherlands and is available in ten languages. You Have Me to Love is currently being adapted into an English-language film.
DAVID DOHERTY studied English and literary linguistics in Glasgow before moving to Amsterdam, where he has been working as a translator since 1996. His translations include novels by critically acclaimed Dutch-language authors: The Dutch Maiden by Marente de Moor (long-listed for the Warwick Translation Prize 2017), Monte Carlo by Peter Terrin, and The Dyslexic Hearts Club by Hanneke Hendrix. He has also translated the work of leading Dutch sports writers Hugo Borst and Wilfried de Jong. David was recently commended by the jury of the Vondel Translation Prize for his translations of The Dutch Maiden and You Have Me to Love.
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AUTHOR
‘One day a woman in an old-people’s home lay her hand on my knee and said, “do you know you have really beautiful legs?” I said, “no, but thank you very much.” Then she asked, “do you have a girlfriend?” When I answered yes, she quickly took her hand