The Book of Everything

Eleven-year-old Thomas lives with his parents and older sister in a small-town terraced house in the Netherlands in the early 1960s. He grows up with a strictly conservative and religious father, but Thomas begins to increasingly question his father’s faith. He writes his own thoughts about God and the world into his diary ‘The Book of Everything’, where the boy describes events that only he can see. From time to time, Jesus appears to him when his father reads from the Bible or when Thomas needs advice. Sometimes his father beats him up when he sings incorrectly in church, and even his mother is not spared humiliation. In this oppressive family situation, Thomas repeatedly experiences very bizarre things with his rich, childlike imagination. Jumping fish in the pond or croaking frogs all over the street make his life adventurous and bearable. In the end, his neighbour, Mrs Van Amersfoort, who is rumoured to be a witch, becomes a lifeline.