The Dutch writer Anton Koolhaas is most well-known for his novels and stories featuring animals as the main characters. However, he has written a few novels in which people form the main protagonists, featuring animals is a sub-plot.Vanwege een tere huid is one of these books.

One criterion to decide whether a book is "good", is whether it leaves an impression on the reader or not. That impression may be a sense of beauty, importance, insight, but also be a sense of disgust, a provocation or some very unsettling set of images and/or ideas. Vanwege een tere huid has certainly touched such a chord in me.

The main story is simple enough. First love, a twelve-year-old boy loves a girl, same age, but abandons her. Both are scarred for life.

The sub-plot is the story of two non-existing animals --hoedna's--, life-long mates, which can best be imagined as a kind of beaver.

The epilogue to the book is unexpectedly philosophical, and in two or three pages seems to cover more material than the essence of the story itself.

The story is best summed up by a quotation from the book: "In every woman a girl has died, in every man a boy." ( )

Verhaal over de eerste liefde van een twaalfjarig jongetje en een meisje. Dieren: de laatste twee Afrikaanse hoedna's.
Citaat: 'In iedere vrouw is een meisje gestorven, in iedere man een jongetje.' ( )