Book Review: The Closest Thing by Žaneta Voldánová

Natalina has a picture-perfect marriage, yet she’s not happy in it. She tries to make it work, but something is missing. Something is not quite alright. One night, she wishes for nothing else but to leave her husband and her life behind, and she sets off on the road, trying to escape it all. She knows she will come back because that’s who Lina is, after all – reasonable and responsible.

A storm drives her to a little hotel along the highway, which is packed since many other people needed to seek shelter. She has a choice to go on searching for a different place in the horrible weather or to share a room with someone willing to have her. That’s how she meets Jane, a beginning clothes designer.

Jane is unconventional in many aspects, and Lina feels freer with her than she has in years. In the desperate mental state she is in and feeling a need to be that person just for a night, she decides to pretend in front of Jane that she really left her husband. It feels good to be someone else. It feels good to be cheered on for being brave to make that step.

After that night, Lina returns to her husband, newly refreshed and ready to give the relationship another go. However, the bond created between the two women makes them arrange to meet each other every month in the same hotel. The issue is that Jane now believes that Lina, whom she calls Nats, lives a very different family life than is true. Lina likes being Nats, though, and doesn’t want to lose it by telling Jane the truth. How long can this go on? How close to each other can they get with this secret between them without causing hurt? And what is their relationship exactly?

…

I was immediately drawn into the story because, in Natalina, the author managed to create a character that I know painfully too well. Always trying to do the best for others, pushing herself in the background, and forgetting she matters too. That, together with the fact that the marriage isn’t all bad, creates a fun uncertainty of how the story will develop. I admit that perhaps 30 pages before the end, I wrote the author a somewhat dramatic email asking her about “how this will end, please tell me that she won’t xxx???”

I also liked that there was no bad guy in the story, only bad choices. Even though I was so upset with the husband at times for his little manipulations and microaggressions and obvious overlooking of Natalina’s needs, he was not described as a bad guy. Just someone who’s obviously mismatched in their marriage (and who, in my opinion, needs to work on themselves, ideally with a therapist). Towards the end, I was also very upset with Jane. She does something that she means well, and that ends up well but by doing it, in my view, crosses all the lines of acceptable behavior (since she decides she can make a particular decision for Natalina where she has no business doing so). However, even that has its place in the book since it makes Jane a little less perfect and more human. I wish it would be more reflected on, though.

Ultimately, the story was about two things for me:

First, about Natalina finding space in her life to incorporate all the different parts of her personality and learning to reach for what she wants and needs because no one can do that for you.

And second, about surrounding yourself with people who bring up the best in you and with whom you can build up your backlog of unforgettable moments.

I wish everyone would have their “closest thing”.

…

Here’s a quote I wished I could tell Natalina the whole time (a quote, I admit, I have on my own wall):

“If you’re people-pleasing, remember that you’re people too.”

(if you know the author of the quote, please let me know, I forgot)

Order here

(It has both a Czech and an English version inside one book.)