Schijnbewegin (2005) - Druckversion

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If there is one series of adolescent books that coming Book Week should also be in large batches in the adult department, then it is the imposing trilogy 'A green flower', the masterpiece of Floortje Zwigtman. The pills include the penetrating story of the seventeen-year-old Adrian Mayfield, working-class son of Victorian London, who ends up as a painter's model and boy's whore in the circles around Oscar Wilde.



In the months that that famous dandy writer goes down in court in a sensational sodomy process, Adrian tries to escape fate in the streets of the city. He also loves men and one in particular: the well-to-do painter Vincent Farley. Love is mutual, even though Vincent remains in conflict with the prevailing views on his 'morbid tendencies'. When the man discovers Adrian's whoring past, he breaks the relationship with disgust and decides to choose a virtuous marriage with a woman. So far the content of the first parts 'Shine Movements' and 'Counter Game'.



In this spectacular final part, Adrian is on revenge. He wants Vincent back in his life, as a friend or as an enemy. But what can a street cat start with a scion of an influential family? Adrian has only one weapon: a scandal, which probably also means his own demise.



'Mirror boy' explores in a sublime way the dark moment when love turns into hatred. Adrian goes far to avenge himself and in sadistic pleasure is assisted by the shady Lady Kinderly, a transsexual who trades London's back street children to wealthy men in Paris. An equally creepy and memorable character that, like almost all colorful characters in the trilogy, has multiple faces. In a jet-black finale on a masked ball, Adrian continues: he wants to show the world with desperation bordering on his face that Vincent belongs to him.



Zwigtman writes unscrupulously - for the children's literature certainly taboo-breaking: intense, sensory and incredibly detailed about (the fringes of) Victorian society, about the forbidden love and sex in many flavors: rancid, perverse, exciting, passionate and tender. She opens an overwhelming world where you can spend a few long reading days.



But the best thing is the portrait of Adrian, who, in spite of what society makes clear to him through the Wilde process, still wants to love 'without God's blessing and without a doctor's certificate'. It requires, he concludes, courage to become happy. The poignant epilogue in which Vincent, as an older man, looks back on his life and what happened to Adrian, speaks volumes in that respect.