Monica Hesse's 'Girl In The Blue Coat'

In Monica Hesse’s novel, Girl in the Blue Coat, the story completes with a round-trip back to the exposition regarding the main character and the missing Jewish girl through the introduction of similarity between the two damaged women. In the introduction, Hanneke is described as a master-finder for black market items during the 1940’s in the Nazi-controlled Amsterdam, including various meats, real coffee, real tea, and cigarettes. Despite Hanneke being introduced as mentally stable, it's apparent throughout the novel that grief plagues her mind from the loss of her boyfriend, Sebastian (Bas). While visiting Mrs. Janssen, a black market customer, the thought of Mrs. Janssen’s son and Bas pokes her mind, “I wonder if he was near Bas, though,

during the invasion. I wonder this about everything now, trying to piece together the last minutes of the boy I loved” (Hesse 12).

Considering Hanneke’s thought, her boyfriend’s passing certainly torments her mind on an everyday basis, especially from the unfinished picture of what led up to his death. The connection between Hanneke and Mrs. Janssen, who both lost loved ones in the war, is what drives Hanneke to use her item-finding ability to help Mrs. Janssen track down Mirjam Roosevelt, a missing Jewish girl Mrs. Janssen had been hiding from the Nazis. Although extremely difficult in the beginning, Hanneke is able to use her previously obtained skills, from black market trading, to begin an extensive quest across Amsterdam to find Mirjam. Briefly, Hanneke is able to locate the real Mirjam, after realizing the deceased original Mirjam found was an allusive plan Mirjam had put in place to go under the radar as a different person. Once able to talk to Mirjam, Hanneke explains to her the already blurry events that led to the death of Amelia, who was put in place as a body-double for Mirjam’s escape. While weeping for the death of Amelia, Mirjam responds, “Then you know. You know what it’s like to love someone like you love yourself and then lose them” (Hesse

293). In this statement, Mirjam realizes that Hanneke is not simply giving her sympathy for the matter at hand, but is indeed giving empathy for the event. In the exposition of the novel, Hanneke has a difficult time with the death Sebastian but is able to distract herself from the grief through the search of Mirjam. Therefore, Monica Hesse was able to elegantly connect the two characters through the final event, the death of Amelia, and the beginning event, the passing of Sebastian.