“When you travel as a girl, you don’t learn anything about the world. All you learn is that there’s a way of looking at the world that doesn’t belong to you,” says twentysomething protagonist Sofie Lakmaker, who shares a surname and major biographical details with her author. She is recalling a trip around Europe she made at 18, with the possibility of danger at every corner: “At every hostel I stayed in I made sure to get a top bunk just so I could keep a lookout.” There’s the abjection that comes with having less power. “There were a lot of men who tried to kiss me on that trip. It was nuts.” As for the prospect of finding deliverance? Forget it. “You can race around the world searching for meaning and look for words that capture that meaning. But you won’t find anything.”
For Sofie, such passivity is a constant feature of being alive. Growing up in the well-heeled Oud-Zuid district of Amsterdam, things seem to happen to her, rather than by her. She is an aspiring writer who wishes to be one of “the Greats”, but one problem with trying to be a genius as a girl, she discovers, is that people spend a lot of time telling you how much nicer you would look if you grew your hair long.
