The Consequences

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An amazing game of mirrors. [...] Original and promising.

-LE MONDE

2014 Anton Wachter Prize for Best First Novel

Golden Book Owl Reader's Choice Award

Opzij Feminist Literature Prize

2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize

Nominated for the John Leonard Prize, National Book Critics Circle

MEET MINNIE PANIS, a young and talented conceptual artist navigating love affairs, her unexpected success in the art world, and her relationship with an emotionally distant mother. After surviving a near-death experience falling through the ice during her ultimate artwork, Minnie begins to uncover the truth behind her premature birth with the help of the doctor who saves her life-as it turns out-twice. Entering into his clinic, whose motto is All the fish needs is to get lost in the water, Minnie arrives at the border of life's ebb, where meaningful art and revelations occur. An intimate, often humorous exploration of the intertwining cycles of death, rebirth and coincidence, The Consequences is a Bildungsroman that echoes far beyond the last page.

Nia Weijers' remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame, whose blase 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

Reviews

Weijers masterfully slips back and forth between the (temporal) present and various pasts in Minnies life, elaborating on her disappearances and her sadness. Weijers literary inspiration comes from Samuel Becketts Happy Days, but she leaves Becketts futility behind to deliver a deeply compelling search for meaning that at times turns on the slightest connectionslike 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 Paniss disappearances. The question: what drives these disappearances, is stated and restated so many times that it, in itself, becomes a disappearing actwoven into the very nature of the book, it disappears from the readers consciousness. [...]Only after I finished the novel, did it occur to me that Nia 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
Nia Weijers remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame whose blas art project has unintended consequences. Weijers invokes Kurt Vonnegut in the course of the narrative, and this novel shares Vonneguts 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, Minnies 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 shes doing and you want to know all about it because its so vividly told. The temptation not to exist, to disappear from the world youre 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 its 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
How is it that some people arent able to tell that their own lives are a highly gripping story Minnie cant do that. Weijers fortunately can.
Vogue (Germany)
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 shed 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 Nia Weijerss remarkable first novel
National Book Critics Circle
The Consequences is in part about and part of the art worlds commodification of resistance. But it is also about the relationship of an artist to their art, and of the struggles of artists to represent what is absent. [...] That The Consequences is populated by many well known artists and illuminated by the description of their artworks is a beautiful treat for the part of the reader that loves learning about art history.
Franziska Lamprecht, Full Stop
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.
BCHERmagazin
Minnie Panis is a conceptual artist whose near-death experience during an installation convinces her to seek psychological help. But is the doctor shes chosen a helper, or a gateway to another dimension The day Minnie Panis vanished from her own life for the third time. . . Youll be hooked as I was if you pick up this serious yet humor-filled examination of a life perhaps too-well examinedbut 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.
Libration
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
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 artand 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 throughoutThoroughly enjoyable and agreeably provocative.
M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

Author Bio

Nia Weijers studied literary theory in Amsterdam and Dublin. She has published short stories, essays and articles in various literary magazines, such as Das Magazin, De Gids and De Revisor. In 2010 she won the writing competition Write Now!. She's a regular contributor to the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, and an editor of De Gids. Her debut novel De consequenties (The Consequences) was published in May 2014. It won the Anton Wachter Prize 2014 for best first novel, the Opzij Feminist Literature Prize, the 2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize, and was shortlisted for the Libris Prize and the Golden Book Owl, the two most important Dutch and Flemish literary awards, the latter of which awarded her with the Reader's Choice Award.

Hester Velmans was born in the Netherlands, educated in Switzerland and England, and today lives in western Massachusetts. She is a translator specializing in contemporary Dutch and French literature. Her translation of Renate Dorrestein's A Heart of Stone won the 2001 Vondel Prize; in 2014 she was awarded a U.S. National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship to translate the neglected novelist Herman Franke. She is the author of the popular children's books Isabel of the Whales and Jessaloup's Song. Her new novel,

Slipper (Perrault's Mistress)

is forthcoming.