Goldfish and Concrete is a novella in 29 bullets. It is a story about grief, love, Clarice Lispector, Anish Kapoor, and the curtains that divide the writer from the reader, a daughter from her mother, the protagonist from her lover. This way of understating one’s choices is something Maartje Wortel shares with the lives of “her” parents in the novella: “My father says he ended up in Tilburg because he got into a car one day. It’s one way of telling your life story.” And about her mother she writes: “When she met my father she was married to a pastry chef from Oisterwijk. He named a cookie after her, but aside from that wasn’t very passionate.” Goldfish and Concrete is Maartje Wortel at her best: a never-ending story, a dazzling ballad, a pamphlet-like contemplation, a holistic chain. It’s a story you can’t actually explain. And you don’t need to. You just have to dive in. Dive into the sea in Tilburg.