A review by san_in_ca
A Heart of Stone by Renate Dorrestein

4.0

This was one of the books that I randomly picked up at a thrift store a long while ago and which was sitting on my bookshelf. I didn’t even realize it was a translated book from an originally Dutch author until I started reading it. The book tells the heart-wrenching story of Ellen and what happened to her and her family. Ellen buys back the home where her parents operated a news-clipping service when she was a child. Only gradually do the secrets unfold about what happened there, only gradually do we understand what she is struggling with. The seamless weaving together of the past and present, of 12-year old Ellen telling the story and 37-year old Ellen struggling with the tragic fate of her family, is very well done and made me not want to put the book down until I knew all that had happened.