Praise for Love, If That’s What It Is
“Dutch playwright Schermer explores themes of romantic ennui and individuality in her scintillating debut, a yearlong account of a deteriorating marriage.(…) The author expertly humanizes each of the characters’ desires and flaws as she illuminates the raw, inner workings of a broken marriage. This is as cathartic as it is gut-churning.”—Publishers Weekly
“Marijke Schermer dissects ordinary family life so subtly and yet so vibrantly, that it leaves you out of breath and makes you revaluate your own most self-evident assumptions.” — Roxane van Iperen, author of The High Nest
“Insightful and engrossing.” —The Herald
“Marijke Schermer flawlessly analyzes how love takes its course.” —Het Parool
“On every page Schermer excels with sentences that seem ordinary, but are packed with meaning. After every striking sentence, I had to put the book down for a while. This book is about love—if that’s what it is, of course—and who has not become love’s victim?” —Trouw
“Schermer’s technical ingenuity traps you, making you question your standards, assumptions, and blind spots. This is a big and definitive, but also investigative, story about love. Schermer is fast becoming one of the most interesting writers in the Netherlands.” —NRC Handelsblad
“Schermer’s fresh style adds something really new to the mountain of stories about falling in love, unhappy marriages, cheating, and heartbreak—she seems to have cleared the dust of the whole theme.” —De Volkskrant
“Love, If That’s What It Is has the potential to become as successful as Herman Koch’s The Dinner.” —De Standaard
“This novel has just as careful and poetic a style and as precise a construction as her previous two. Schermer effortlessly manages to infect you again with the feelings of the novel’s characters.” —Tzum
