Nothing but the truth

It just took her a while to get started. “The older you get, the more you read,” she continues, “and I realised that I’d never be able to compete with the literary greats. So I was struck by insecurity, and I postponed the idea until I finally decided it was time to go for it.”

The premise was simple: “I wanted to write a book about an ugly woman who is faced with all kinds of hardships.”

Remarkably, once Op de Beeck (pictured) set her mind to it, the book was written in a mere four months. “Once I started writing, it just poured out of me,” she says.

Which doesn’t mean it was exactly easy. Despite Op de Beeck’s years of journalism experience, there is a big difference between writing fact and writing fiction, she states. “My columns for De Morgen are already pretty personal because they’re my thoughts on various subjects, but writing a novel is as intimate as it gets. You make yourself extremely vulnerable by releasing to the world something that you created from scratch and which everybody can comment on and criticise. It is a very daunting experience.”

Same story, many versions

Vele hemels boven de zevende revolves around five characters: Eva, a 30-something who counsels inmates in a prison; her elder sister Elsie, who’s torn between her marriage and her lover; their father, the 71-year-old Jos, who tries to wash away the past with alcohol; Elsie’s lover Caspar; and finally, Elsie’s daughter Lou, whose first year of secondary school is off to a rocky start. They all have their own problems – some big, some small – and are restlessly trying find their way in life.

The characters are connected and are telling their own versions of what is essentially the same story. “I feel that many first-time authors have the habit of wanting to explain or describe too much,” says Op de Beeck, “which is why I chose one character and surrounded her with four others who are all related, in a sense. By doing this, I could tell a story that develops through different voices and points of view.”

Vele hemels is told through interior monologues, including memories of conversations the characters had. “I envisioned them in a room talking to a camera about how they ended up at this point in their lives,” explains Op de Beeck.

Still, it is a story driven by action, a story you could easily imagine unfolding right in front of you, making the connection with her past as a dramaturge not that far-fetched. She points to the use of dialect in the prose. “Writing the dialogues in ge and gij instead of je and jij has something to do with that,” she says. “When I’m watching people on stage, I really dislike it when they use formal language because it sounds so artificial. By using a more colloquial way of speaking, it’s more real.”

Dare to tell the truth

Dialect also makes the book feel accessible, as does the subject matter. Vele hemels deals with the seemingly insurmountable obstacles faced by average people in their daily lives and the ways in which people deal with both emotional and physical injuries. “I wanted to show how far you can get by really listening to yourself, by not being afraid to be honest, and that old wounds are capable of healing,” says Op de Beeck. “But on the other hand, there are people who struggle with adversity due to their age or social circumstances. It’s something universal.”

Vele hemels is a book that describes ways of looking at the world. Its candour and insight dares to pose questions that many don’t want to be asked and certainly don’t want to answer. It’s about being brave enough to face the truth and about the realisation that it’s how we deal with the choices we’ve made that matters most.

Op de Beeck believes that happiness comes with the ability to be completely honest with yourself – an intimidating task if there ever was one. “Philosophers and psychologists are always talking about how we are incapable of being happy because we constantly want more, because there are endless options,” she says. “But I often encounter people who are too scared to actually consider what makes them happy, let alone pursue it. Some people are simply stuck in a role, like the loving father or the faithful wife, that they don’t dare ask questions. They are scared of letting go and opening up to the possibility that there might be something else out there that could make them truly happy.”

It might be safe to say that Op de Beeck has found what makes her happy; she’s already at work on her second novel.

www.tinyurl.com/velehemels

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