Up

Overview

Up is a Dutch-language novel by Myrthe van der Meer, first published in 2015. It belongs to contemporary psychological fiction and continues the story associated with the author’s earlier novel PAAZ, whose title refers to the psychiatric department of a general hospital. The book’s central figure is Emma, and its title points toward the emotional “up” as well as the broader question of what counts as being well. In the opening situation, Emma reflects on moving between depression and an almost ecstatic happiness, and wonders whether both sides of that range can be treated as problems.

Emma looks forward to what she expects will be her final appointment with her psychiatrist. Instead, the doctor has disappeared, the replacement knows nothing about a planned closing conversation, and before the day is over Emma has once again been admitted to the psychiatric ward of a general hospital. Convinced that this new hospital stay must be a mistake, she finds herself back in an environment she knows: a maze of medication, psychiatrists, and fellow patients. The publisher’s description presents her as searching for a way through this bewildering situation. The available account does not disclose the ending, so the novel is best described as following Emma’s renewed struggle to make sense of her circumstances rather than as a completed tale of recovery.

Themes and context

The book’s central tension is the difficulty of locating a stable idea of normality. Emma accepts that depression can be a problem, but questions why the intensely elevated side of her experience should also be treated as one. If both states make her seem risky or burdensome to others, she asks, when can she simply be herself? That question connects emotional distress to identity, social judgment, and the language used to describe mental health. The hospital setting gives these concerns a concrete form: treatment, professional authority, medication, and contact with other patients become part of Emma’s daily effort to understand what is happening to her.

Up follows PAAZ in its attention to psychiatric hospitalization and to Emma’s experience. The available publisher material establishes that continuity, but does not provide reliable detail about the author’s personal circumstances or the precise process behind the novel’s composition. It would therefore be unwarranted to treat the book as a direct memoir. Its writing background can be described more securely as a continuation of a fictional narrative concerned with the lived realities of mental distress and care. Rather than offering a simple inspirational arc, the story foregrounds uncertainty: Emma must contend with a sudden admission and with questions about how others interpret her emotional states.

The novel’s lasting significance is most responsibly understood in relation to that subject and to the author’s continuing portrait of Emma. It gives readers a patient-centered view of psychiatric care and invites consideration of how diagnoses, risk, and social expectations affect a person’s sense of self. The evidence available here does not establish major awards, broad cultural impact, or canonical status, so Up should not be overstated as a landmark. It remains a notable continuation of van der Meer’s work on mental health, identity, and life inside a psychiatric ward.