People With No Charisma – Jente Posthuma

It’s a rare reader, I think, who wouldn’t be immediately intrigued by the blurb of People With No Charisma: “An unnamed narrator grows up overshadowed by her unconventional mother, an ex–Jehovah’s Witness and former television star with an inferiority complex. Her father is the head of a psychiatric institution, whose only form of parenting is to offer his daughter the same life advice he dispenses to his patients.”

So, you can see why I was thrilled that Scribe sent me a copy for review!

People With No Charisma was first published in its original Dutch back in 2016, and is now available to us Anglophones thanks to the brilliant work of translator Sarah Timmer Harvey.

There’s no plot, per se – it’s more of a series of anecdotes about the unnamed narrator’s unusual life, mostly her relationship with her parents, in roughly chronological order. I don’t say this as a criticism, just as a heads-up for any readers who prefer a more plot-driven novel. A lot of the chapters of People With No Charisma could stand alone as short stories, which makes it the perfect pick if you need something you can pick up and put down. It is also, of course, very funny and very wry.

I will give another heads up as well: first, for a very sad but peaceful dog death in the early chapters, and then another very, very sad and decidedly not-peaceful dog death later on – other than that, Posthuma’s novel was a great read!