Phil M. Shirley talks to Flemish author Vince Piessens about chemistry, working on a farm in Costa Rica, old flames and his new book, Searching for Adeline.
When Vince Piessens was just fourteen, he landed his dream job reviewing video games for a gaming blog. “A friend of mine mentioned my love for writing and gaming to them, and they reached out to see if I wanted to give it a shot,” he recalls with a chuckle. “The perk? You get a free game for each review, and at fourteen, I thought, ‘Great! I can play even more games for free!’ So, I started writing. My early work wasn’t very good, but the editor-in-chief, who was studying journalism, took me under his wing. He taught me a lot about sentence structure and how to develop my writing skills, and it all just grew from there.”
It’s a revealing anecdote, speaking to Piessens’ passion for writing that makes you feel something, but also to his open-mindedness and willingness to master a trade. It’s one of many anecdotes the blogger turned chemist turned novelist regales me with from our meeting place Mazette, a cooperative café-brasserie located in a square in the heart of the Marolles district of the City of Brussels.
After his journalism stint, Piessens found himself eager to write more, but he wasn’t keen on returning to journalism. Instead, he turned to fiction. “At first, writing longer pieces was challenging,” he recalls, “but I quickly became immersed in it.”
During this time, the young Flemish writer was also wrapping up his chemistry thesis, which focused on bioplastics. “I had about a month of free time before heading off on holiday, and I wanted to make the most of it,” he says. “I began writing again, sharing my work with a couple of friends who were eager to read along and discuss it. They, too, were completing their internships related to our theses and would soon be moving away. I was determined to finish my story before they left so I could gift it to them.”
The result was a short story titled The Last Day, about a young boy who finds himself lost on the coast of Spain.
Piessens’ latest work, Searching for Adeline, was crafted during a transformative period spent working on a farm in Costa Rica, where he had no internet access. “The afternoons were too hot to work, so I would sit at my laptop, listening to podcasts about politics and other subjects. I met many inspiring people there, and their stories fuelled my creativity.” He gathered various ideas as a foundation for his novel and spent about three years developing it, allowing the diverse inspirations he encountered along the way to weave naturally into the narrative.
Piessens’ shrewd and provocative debut novella follows the fate of a wealthy but disillusioned older man, Adam Wilson, on an impulsive journey to find an old flame who has gone missing on the other side of the world in a highly secretive and post-totalitarian country. One day, while watching the news, he discovers that an old acquaintance and former flame has gone missing. This revelation sparks a sense of urgency within him; he feels compelled to help them, as it seems like the right thing to do. This journey not only leads him to assist someone in need but also prompts him to reevaluate his own life.
The novel explores a well-known sentiment, an idea that reflects how many of us feel unfulfilled, losing touch with our true selves. “In my view, a strong message in this story is that we often hope for a crisis or a dramatic event to give our lives meaning and reignite our passions,” Piessens says. “The protagonist is a successful man who doesn’t need to get involved in this situation, yet he finds himself drawn into a predicament he could easily avoid. It’s almost a relief for him, as he waits for a catalyst—something that might give him a reason to truly live again. Life can sometimes pull us along, making us feel stuck. We may find ourselves making choices less actively, until an opportunity presents itself. He jumps into action without any real incentive, but this chance allows him to rediscover his purpose.
“Can it be that sometimes our lives must be completely shaken up and rearranged to guide us to where we’re meant to be? We all have a mission on this earth, and figuring out what that mission is takes time. Ultimately, aren’t we all seeking something beyond our current existence? At some point in our lives, many of us have dreamed of a different reality. The allure of a new and better life might make us willing to risk losing our current one entirely. Yet, part of us often hopes for an end, believing that it might lead to something greater.”
A portion of Searching for Adeline is set in London, as the protagonist shares his memories of the woman he quickly fell in love with. These nostalgic reflections include several references to the city. One of my favourite passages is when the protagonist Adam Wilson, as a young version of himself, comes across a cafe-bar, the very place where he would first meet Adeline.
The Dusty Bookshelf, as the place had been called, had been one of an ancient and arcane beauty. The walls had been made up of rows upon rows of books of every shape, size, and age imaginable. On the ceiling there used to be a mural of Aphrodite in her clam shell, so exquisitely painted that it convinced me of being the perfect mix between Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel and Botticelli’s masterpiece, the Birth of Venus, only with more charm to the whole thing, charm expressed through flaking and dust. The wooden floorboards had made a satisfying creak as I’d shifted my weight from one foot to the other, marveling at the incredible range of plants filling every nook and cranny of the room. There had been hanging plants coming down from the shelves, exotic flowers like Bird of Paradise had been set-up around the tables and customers had to watch out for the enormous Venus flytrap that had been placed right next to the cash register when they went over to pay their tabs. Completely harmless, but dangerous looking all the same. The dusty old book smell combined with the sweet from all the flowers had been prone to create an unearthly aroma I remember fondly to this very day. It could have been the garden of Eden for all I’d known, complete with sweet jazzy sounds coming from a record player behind the counter. There had been a roaring fireplace in the far-left corner of the room, one hell of a fire hazard, right behind a little wall separating that section from the main area. I had sat down right there at a makeshift table constructed out of an abandoned whiskey barrel, in my own little alcove, feeling like an adventurer atop a newly discovered temple of some long forgotten, sun-worshipping society in the middle of the Caribbean rainforest. Even the menu had been unique, consisting for the most part of drinks I’d never heard of in my life. Trying to keep the good juices flowing, I had ordered something labelled as “champagne beer”, sacrilegiously called Deus. A fantastic refreshment which was brought out in a deluxe seventy-five centiliter bottle and then subsequently served in special flutes. The drink had been way too expensive for it to become my signature, but damn if it hadn’t been worth it for the occasional indulgence. Wishing to fully envelop myself in this mystical place, I began glancing over the covers of the wall of books next to me, most of them covered in a thick layer of dust. Eventually, I ended up choosing a hefty Spanish tome titled ‘Sir Francis Drake: El Pirata de la Reina’. I had been twenty pages and my first glass of Deus in when I’d first heard her voice. The bookcase serving as the wall that fenced off my sanctuary had made it impossible to peer into the main part of the bar, but the way she had come in had been enough. My curiosity had first been roused when I had noticed the door swinging open with a loud creak, followed by the sound of springy footsteps on the scratched-up floor. The music in her voice when she had called out to the regulars and personnel, whom she had all known by name, in her perfect East-London accent had enchanted me, carried me off to a distant dream where I was bathing in a hot spring, deep in the jungle, with the continuous rush of a waterfall and the orchestra of goldfinches, scarlet macaws, crimson-colored tanagers and other songbirds in the background, lulling me into a deep and careless sleep. Lady Luck was on my side that day and I had pretended not to notice when I’d heard her words becoming louder, she, heading my way, me, burying my nose deep in the late pirate’s biography.
“I’m sorry but is this seat taken? It’s just that you’re kind of in my favorite spot”, she had said to me smiling, pointing to the vacant seat next to me.
Slowly, I had lifted my eyes up from the page. Auburn trousers with wide elephant pipes, fluffy and baggy, cream-colored, woolen sweater partially covering up her smooth, exquisite porcelain pale hands, leaving unveiled the most adorable little birthmark on the back of her left hand. Obviously fake, nevertheless enchanting, golden rings on her index fingers and in her ears, a fragile but elegant neck, the face of an angel, a single dimple in her rosy left cheek as she had stood there smiling, blushing from the cold wind outside. Full and lively red lips, small nose, long, ginger, slightly curly hair cut-up in bangs at the front, topped off with thick eyebrows and the smallest and most adorable scar just above the left. She had radiated a powerful self-assurance, held in balance by a sweet pistachio perfume and a smile that would have been able to melt away the sorrows of any man. To me, she had been, and always will be, perfect in every way.
As writers, we often weave autobiographical elements into our fiction, even if some authors prefer not to discuss it. So, I’m curious—did Piessens’ personal experiences in London influence these passages, or is this purely a work of imagination?
“For sure,” he replies with a wry smile. “The places in London, the bars, the scenery, and the walks I took were all shared with friends or a lover at the time. I remember those moments fondly, as well as the romance itself.”
Piessens’ reveals that he didn’t know the ending of Searching for Adeline when he started writing. He explains that while he had a general idea of the characters and their arcs, he allowed the story to unfold organically as he wrote.
“I wrote the first 30% of the novel in just two months,” he says. “I had a lot of spare time during the summer. I would often go to a café and write. However, as life got busier, it became more challenging to find the time. I set it aside for about six or seven months. Eventually, I knew I wanted to finish the story because I believed it was worth completing. I decided to set a weekly word count for myself, but I struggled with that. So I adjusted my goal to a monthly target, trying to stick to a schedule. Whenever I had an hour or two to spare, I would write. Sometimes it was tough with other commitments after work, but I made an effort to use my free time wisely.
“My girlfriend also writes, which helps a lot. On some Sundays, she would suggest we go to a café together to write, and that motivated me significantly. I managed to write about 90% to 95% of the story, but then I spent the next 2 to 4 months going back and forth over those sections. I kept reworking chapters and reconsidering the order, which took a long time. Knowing I had some long flights coming up, I resolved to finish the final chapter once and for all.”
It feels weird to ask Piessens what’s coming next, a few months before Searching for Adeline arrives in shops. But I do it anyway. “I always have a couple of things floating where I just go back to or don’t go back to,” he says. “At the moment I don’t have a story idea. I’ve got more of a writing style idea that I want to play with. So I’ve been exploring that for a bit. I’m not sure if it’s gonna go anywhere, but I’m getting more and more into it and the story’s kind of starting to shape. But it’s very early days.”
Searching for Adeline by Vince Piessens is published by Foreshore in February in paperback.
VINCE PIESSENS is a chemist by trade and the author of The Last Day (Amazon/Kindle), a short story. He lives in Brussels, Belgium.
PHIL M. SHIRLEY is a publisher and writer and the author of numerous books including The Soul of Boxing (HarperCollins), Blood & Thunder (HarperCollins), Miracles Can Happen (HarperCollins), The Rivers That Run Through Us (Foreshore Publishing) and The Happening of Magic (Foreshore Publishing).
