What's Coddled Children about?
Do we need a new political fiction novel?
Coddled Children tells the story of Kitty and Joshua, growing up in a post-nuclear society called ‘The Free Nations’. Kitty is one of the first children born in a birthing center and raised in a child center, in a community that has abolished families and everything else that may cause inequity between the Free Nation’s inhabitants. Kitty however is not like everyone else. She tries to find some meaning and happiness in a society in which all aspects of life are narrowly decreed and regulated. She knows something is not right, but she just can’t put her finger on it. All around her, everybody seems content. No one has to work hard, everything is dictated to the tiniest detail and you don’t have to worry about a thing. Kitty tries to fit in, tries to make the Free Nations work for her as well, but every day ends in disappointment. After yet another downer, a frustrated Kitty agrees to a sex date in a closely supervised ‘intimacy-room’ to spice up her life. However, instead of the anticipated romance Kitty finds herself fearing for her life.
Joshua, on the other hand, grows up in the outskirts of the Free Nations. He was just a toddler when the nuclear war destroyed the world, killing his parents. Banished together with all the white men for past crimes committed by their peers and ancestors, he lives a meager existence. Raised by his grandfather, Joshua has outspoken ideas about what the ideal society should look like. He spends his days as the last specialist upholding the Free Nation’s IT systems, while passing his nights dreaming of a free world. One day Joshua pledges his support to overthrow the Free Nations, causing an uproar that shakes the Free Nations to their foundations.
Kitty and Joshua are caught in a society where leaders think they know best how their subordinates should run their lives, where the ‘right opinion’ matters more than being right. The book is quite unique in that it contrasts various points of view and offers a different perspective on topics most of us stay away from. Above all, the book illustrates we should not wait for political extremes to ‘solve’ the situation, but emphasizes the dire need of thinking for ourselves and take back control over our lives wherever possible.
Why write a novel, when so many non-fiction writers address more or less the same issues in their works? Well, I had multiple reasons. For starters, non-fiction articles and books are more abstract. The non-fiction author is telling his audience what events are occurring and what the results of those decisions will be. In my novel, I want people to feel what is happening to them. I want them to shake and shiver, to be angry, irritated, frustrated, happy, hopeful, sad and outraged from time to time. I want my readers to get inside the head of the people they despise in everyday life, to feel how it would be to walk in the shoes of the people we now so easily condemn and shove aside, to show all people have their own background and personal experiences which have led to convictions which in turn may or may not oppose our own. But most of all, I want to remind my readers that we are all on this one planet together, we are all flawed and none of us hold absolute truth or wisdom. Pretending we do will not bring the paradise we all long for. On the contrary…
Secondly, non-fiction authors are much more vulnerable to public opinion than fiction writers. I have discovered this myself, albeit mildly, when I tried to publish some factual articles. But I have seen many other writers and professionals get burned and cancelled for offering well written, substantiated pieces contradicting popular beliefs. Cast out and degraded for speaking out against flawed opinions, half-truths and victimization. One example which personally shocked me is the story of Matthias Desmet, a clinical psychologist. At the height of the COVID-pandemic, he published an exceptional clarifying book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, in which he compares our response to the pandemic with mass formation and groupthink. This very kind and polite professor was subsequently beleaguered by main stream media as a conspiracy theorist and worse. Up until today, many attempts are undertaken to suppress his book and personally condemning him for his professional opinion. I admire dr. Desmet for his ever-willingness to reach out and start a dialogue with the people who have smeared him publicly. I have never seen his kind offerings reciprocated.
In Coddled Children, I vividly describe the downsides of socialism. Pitfalls we don’t hear much about, which however push us all in a direction I am sure we do not want to go. Especially in Western Europe and Canada, where socialists have held the majority since the end of WO II, we can see the machinations of a totalitarian superstate at work. Am I wrong? Am I overreacting? Maybe, but that still doesn’t mean we should stop exchanging ideas and we certainly should not suppress them.
Thirdly, Coddled Children presented me the possibility to incorporate all my observations of the world we live in today. As a non-fiction author, doing that would have cost me at least fifty articles. By choosing fiction I can also illustrate that all the challenges we now face are interrelated. It’s not just left against right, progressivism against conservatism, collectivism against individualism, globalism against nationalism, black against white, young against old, communism against capitalism, liberty against equity, gender against sex, ideology against rationalism, knowledge against diversity and inclusion. Our current events are influenced by all of them and only once we acknowledge the big picture instead of treating each occurrence as an incident, we might find a way out of this mess.
Lastly, it’s much more thrilling and maybe a little harder to write fiction. On the other hand, there is so much more freedom in writing than when you have to validate all your resources and plagiary is always lurking. What I personally found enthralling is the moment your characters are starting to lead their own lives and develop in various other ways than you had envisioned. Coddled Children ended up way different than I initially planned, but in my personal opinion, the end result is a lot better!
Have I piqued your interest? Stay tuned on this Substack and find out more about the book here in the coming months.
Jeanette van Dijk
For Dutch/ Belgian readers: the original book Curlingkinderen has been published on May 22nd, 2024 and is readily available. Check the Dutch Substack for more information:
or check out the website with all details and addresses to buy the book: