The Consequences

Weijers masterfully slips back and forth between the (temporal) present and various pasts in Minnie’s life, elaborating on her disappearances and her sadness​. … Weijers’ literary inspiration comes from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, but she leaves Beckett’s futility behind to deliver a deeply compelling search for meaning that at times turns on the slightest connections—like the fleeting nature of life itself.


– Christopher Michno, Riot Material Magazine

I found the read to be so exhilarating that as the book drew to its close, it took effort to return to the question about the nature of Minnie Panis’s disappearances. The question: what drives these disappearances, is stated and restated so many times that it, in itself, becomes a disappearing act—woven into the very nature of the book, it disappears from the reader’s consciousness. [...] Only after I finished the novel, did it occur to me that Niña Weijers showcases a particularly female life trajectory in a world where feminist ideals of equality between genders are a desirable yet distant goal. 


– Olga Zilberbourg, The Common

Niña Weijers’ remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame whose blasé art project has unintended consequences. Weijers invokes Kurt Vonnegut in the course of the narrative, and this novel shares Vonnegut’s sense of how things can be simultaneously real and absurd. Movies and books notoriously fail to capture the social and spiritual atmosphere of the contemporary art world, but Weijers nails it. Her book is beautifully written, surprising and often profound.


– Chris Kraus

In this sharp book of wry commentary, Minnie’s newfound fame and haunting past come together to explore the nuances of intimacy and identity.


– World Literature Today

The Consequences attempts something that is not easy, and succeeds. A person thinks exhaustively about herself yet does not become boring. She writes about what she’s doing and you want to know all about it because it’s so vividly told. The temptation not to exist, to disappear from the world you’re walking around in, the art you come upon and live with – when you write it down it sounds like heavy going; when you read it it’s light. So read it.


– Cees Nooteboom

This sharp and luminous debut novel, of which Beckett is the real mentor, also gives pride of place to a “neonatalist,” in other words a specialist in newborns, which will not astonish anyone in a history that speaks of art, that is to say, also, of the search for origins.


– Le Point

A smart and wry view of the art business, referencing real artists and told by Minnie with a great deal of irony. At the same time, [the novel] is an in-depth biography of an artist who experiments with vanishing into her own art.


– Augsburger Allgemeine

Minnie Panis is a Dutch artist of growing international reputation. One day, she opens Vogue and finds nearly nude photographs of herself featured in a fashion spread. She did not agree to pose for these pictures, and yet she instantly knows where they came from: a photographer she’d been sleeping with had betrayed her and photographed her asleep; had probably drugged her to capture these images. Thus begins one of the central storylines in Niña Weijers’s remarkable first novel…


– National Book Critics Circle

A bit of mystery, some philosophy, a lot of art and some existentialism — out pops a sparkling, surprising, refreshing story.


– EMOTION

In this novel, tingling with ambition and fascinating ideas, the life and art of the main character revolve around loss, existence and disappearance. A determined tone characterizes this crazy book.


– NRC Handelsblad

A multifaceted portrait of a female artist … full of astute observations.


– BÜCHERmagazin

Minnie Panis is a conceptual artist whose near-death experience during an installation convinces her to seek psychological help. But is the doctor she’s chosen a helper, or a gateway to another dimension? “The day Minnie Panis vanished from her own life for the third time. . .” You’ll be hooked as I was if you pick up this serious yet humor-filled examination of a life perhaps too-well examined—but what would you expect of an artist?


– Literary Hub

This novel is a true must-read, and Weijers is an author all literate readers should discover. […] The Consequences is an astonishing book, shimmering with wit, wisdom, and beauty.


– Garry Craig Powell, Rain Taxi

The Consequences is a text replete with truths about grief, love and failed opportunities. Existing is a difficult task, as each character testifies.


– Libération

Birth. Floating identity. Who we are in the eyes of others — these themes are at the heart of The Consequences. At first, however, the book resembles a series of brilliant variations on the contemporary artistic scene. […] The tone is created in the first pages. Ironic and sharp. Weijers mocks the extreme narcissism prevalent in these circles. She spares us the boring question “What is art?” but questions the boundaries between artwork and life; the visible and the interior self. […] An amazing game of mirrors. […] Original and promising. Other books are sure to follow.


– Le Monde

A surprisingly mature debut, shaped by deep knowledge of human nature.


– Holger Heimann, WDR 3

How is it that some people aren’t able to tell that their own lives are a highly gripping story? Minnie can’t do that. Weijers fortunately can.


– Vogue

The novel calls into question the idea that one can effectively efface the boundary between “life” and “art” and thus achieve an affirmation of life as art…and there are wonderful and insightful digressions on the work of the doomed Dutch conceptualist Bas Jan Ader and Marina Abramovic, the iconic embodiment of the idea of art as personal presence.


– Glenn Harcourt, Artillery Magazine

Despite having very few characters, Weijers’ prose is sharp, intimate, and curious.


– The Riveter

An impressive novel on the art of creative living or the creative and destructive vital force of being an artist.


– Maarten Asscher

Weijers’ unusual life and art story is engaging throughout…Thoroughly enjoyable and agreeably provocative.


– M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review