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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Amazing storytelling about a tragic night and it’s unraveling years later. And one of the best endings of a book I can recall.
Melancholy story of a WWII crime and its brutal consequences in a tiny Dutch street. Tonny Steenwijk lives with the near dormant memory of the destruction of his family as a youth, but has to confront it it in middle age. The moral complications are intricate.
There is something immensely appealing about small books. In an age when bigger is better, and publishers produce books of 400 pages with enormous font and large paragraph spacing there is something reassuring about novels well short of 200 pages. Yes, big things can be said in small packages. And so it is with this.
Originally published in Dutch, the language of the author, this is a powerful piece of fiction writing. Anton is a twelve year old boy, living with his parents and older brother in a town in occupied Holland during WWII. It is 1945, the Nazis are beginning to realise that the tide is turning against them and their retributions whenever a Nazi or collaborator is killed are particularly vicious and somewhat random. So it is in Anton's small town one night when a collaborator is shot by an unknown. The result of this violence is that Anton, in turn, finds the violence turned upon him and his family and he is left an orphan. His life unfolds over the course of the book in a series of episodes between 1945 and 1982 where he grows from boy to man,going through the various stages of a life. At each episode he is confronted in some way by the tragedy of 1945, which was never really explained to him then or since in any way that enabled him to process or make sense of what had happened. Over the course of his life, during these episodes, he gradually comes to understand what really happened that day, and also finds the peace that has eluded him for all of his life. The world as seen through a child's eyes is, as we know, totally different from the same view that an adult may see. And that is what this book is about - the slow peeling away and probing of the secrets and reasons that people do things in a small community, not only to protect themselves, but also to protect those around them. And the healing that occurs as a result to those most damaged.
Originally published in Dutch, the language of the author, this is a powerful piece of fiction writing. Anton is a twelve year old boy, living with his parents and older brother in a town in occupied Holland during WWII. It is 1945, the Nazis are beginning to realise that the tide is turning against them and their retributions whenever a Nazi or collaborator is killed are particularly vicious and somewhat random. So it is in Anton's small town one night when a collaborator is shot by an unknown. The result of this violence is that Anton, in turn, finds the violence turned upon him and his family and he is left an orphan. His life unfolds over the course of the book in a series of episodes between 1945 and 1982 where he grows from boy to man,going through the various stages of a life. At each episode he is confronted in some way by the tragedy of 1945, which was never really explained to him then or since in any way that enabled him to process or make sense of what had happened. Over the course of his life, during these episodes, he gradually comes to understand what really happened that day, and also finds the peace that has eluded him for all of his life. The world as seen through a child's eyes is, as we know, totally different from the same view that an adult may see. And that is what this book is about - the slow peeling away and probing of the secrets and reasons that people do things in a small community, not only to protect themselves, but also to protect those around them. And the healing that occurs as a result to those most damaged.
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
3.5
Interessant hoe er over schuld wordt nagedacht. Is er één iemand schuldig, is iedereen schuldig, of daarmee niemand meer?
Interessant hoe er over schuld wordt nagedacht. Is er één iemand schuldig, is iedereen schuldig, of daarmee niemand meer?
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A well-written, short read. I do wonder how much beauty was lost in translation. I did not feel as fearful as I expected to, given the references to the fragility of life, the arbitrariness of survival and the superficiality of justice
Second book in a row to mention experiencing time as having your back to the future and facing the past. I wonder if this is a Dutch thing, as it is a Māori thing, or merely a coincidence that this author thinks this way.
Quotes:
"Here: symballeton, that's a duality, the coming together of two things, two. Now the two armies also make sense. This is a form you find only in Homer. Remember the word 'symbol, which comes from symballo, 'to bring together, 'to meet? Do you know what a symbolon was?" "No," said Peter in a tone implying that he couldn't care less. "What was it, Papa?" asked Anton. "It was a stone that they broke in two. Say I am a guest in another city, and I ask my host whether he would be willing to receive you too. How can he be sure that you really are my son? We make a symbolon. He keeps one half, and at home I give you the other. So then when you get there, they fit together exactly."
“But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them.”
“He had, besides, the more or less mystical notion that the narcotics did not make the patient insensitive to pain so much as unable to express that pain, and that although drugs erased the memory of pain, the patient was nevertheless changed by it. When patients woke up, it always seemed evident that they had been suffering.“
“Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.”
Second book in a row to mention experiencing time as having your back to the future and facing the past. I wonder if this is a Dutch thing, as it is a Māori thing, or merely a coincidence that this author thinks this way.
Quotes:
"Here: symballeton, that's a duality, the coming together of two things, two. Now the two armies also make sense. This is a form you find only in Homer. Remember the word 'symbol, which comes from symballo, 'to bring together, 'to meet? Do you know what a symbolon was?" "No," said Peter in a tone implying that he couldn't care less. "What was it, Papa?" asked Anton. "It was a stone that they broke in two. Say I am a guest in another city, and I ask my host whether he would be willing to receive you too. How can he be sure that you really are my son? We make a symbolon. He keeps one half, and at home I give you the other. So then when you get there, they fit together exactly."
“But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them.”
“He had, besides, the more or less mystical notion that the narcotics did not make the patient insensitive to pain so much as unable to express that pain, and that although drugs erased the memory of pain, the patient was nevertheless changed by it. When patients woke up, it always seemed evident that they had been suffering.“
“Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.”