Alleenstaande moeder wordt door een onbekende achtervolgd en met de dood bedreigd

T1

Ik vond het een leuk verhaal, niet heel gewoontjes. Het enige grote nadeel was dat het echt zo voorspelbaar is wie achter de stalking zit. Je zit gewoon te wachten tot wanneer het hoofdpersonage nu eindelijk doorheeft hoe het zit. ( )

Maria, een jonge alleenstaande moeder van twee kinderen, krijgt vlak nadat ze een zwangerschap vroegtijdig heeft beeindigd te maken met vreemde anonieme bedreigingen. Ze besluit met haar kinderen onder te duiken bij haar zus, die nog altijd in hun ouderlijk huis aan zee woont. Daar wordt Maria geconfronteerd met verdrongen jeugdherinneringen en beginnen haar dierbaren steeds meer aan haar geestelijke gezondheid te twijfelen. Intussen komt haar belager snel dichterbij ...

This is the debut novel by Dutch author Saskia Noort. Maria, back-up singer and parent to two small children in Amsterdam, broke up with her partner, Geert, whose mental issues finally proved too much for her. She also had an abortion, feeling unequal to the task of raising three children and working without support. Immediately afterwards, she begins to receive threatening messages and it's clear she's being stalked. The police can't do anything. The stalker is clever enough to disguise their identity, and the harassment intensifies until Maria is frightened enough to leave Amsterdam. She's also worried that people don't believe her. The letters are destroyed. The things that happen are designed to look as though she was inventing the threats and she has no idea who she can trust.

There is a lot that is promising in this book. Maria is an interesting character; prickly and slow to make friends, but loving to her children. She has a hard time asking for help or trusting those who offer her help. The idea of being stalked, and how doubts are raised about the target's perceptions makes for compulsive reading. However, [Back to the Coast] is too flawed a story to do justice to the ideas behind the plot. The stalker's identity is revealed too obviously, too often and too early to maintain suspense and what begins as a tale based in reality becomes more and more outrageous in the book's final pages. I loved the setting, a part of the Netherlands I have visited and I hope to give Noort another try with a later novel. ( )