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A review by ilseoo
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
2.0
It has taken me a while after finishing this to think about how to review this book. It is a Dutch classic and is both popular among the reading public and critics alike, but I actually had quite a few problems with it. To start with the positives, I like the writing style. I found it captivating and fast pace. Even though it is such a big book, it didn’t take me that long to read it. Moreover, some of the passages on, for example, history I found quite interesting and insightful. It mixes realistic adult fiction with magical realism elements in an interesting way as well. Although the magical or spiritual element of the book is at the background, it forms an interesting part of the narrative. Also, as a Dutch person who usually reads English books set in different countries than the Netherlands, it was nice to see a story set in such a familiar surrounding for once. Rather than taking place in Amsterdam alone, we go to quite a few different places in the Netherlands that are usually not featured in literature as much. It was nice to see the characters walk around the botanical garden next to the humanities building of Leiden university, which is where I study and walk around quite often.
Now for the negatives. Firstly, Mulisch sometimes simply tried to cover too many topics. Mainly the two male main characters, but also many other minor characters, felt like collections of interesting quirks rather than real people to enable the author to deal with topics ranging from astronomy to history to politics to religion to philosophy or to enable plot developments. All these topics are interesting on their own, but when they are all put together it gets a bit crowded. It got to the point where it created a “look at how intelligent I am trying to cram this essay on the philosophy of politics in a “plausible” way into the dialogue” impression.
Secondly, the sexism annoyed me to the extent of disliking the book. Apart from the obvious situation where Ada gets turned into a breeding machine, there are many occasions where subtle sexism is thrown into the narrative. The "wonderful" expression “women belong in the kitchen” is featured several times. This direct sexism comes mainly from Onno, so at first I thought it could just be one character. However, on many other occasions and by many other characters women are denied a sense of identity and intelligence in much subtler ways. There are two scenes in particular where this happens that struck me the most. In the first scene Ada remarks that some results having to do with astronomy look like a scan of the underside of the brain. This remark is immediately met with scepticism and unbelief at how she could possibly know what the underside of a brain looks like. The two male characters expressing this scepticism were offering strange comparisons as well just seconds before without dismissing each other’s right to offer a meaningful or funny insight. In the second scene a young child is asked to identify the painters of some Easter eggs. After having correctly assigned the eggs to their male painters due to certain elements in the art which fitted their well-formed personalities, he is left with the eggs painted by the two female characters. These are described as being almost indistinguishable, having standard patterns with dots and stripes. A final scene that really tops all of this is when Ada and Max are having sex. Anna was still protesting that she couldn’t possibly have sex with him, being in a relationship with someone else, while Max just continued. This does not seem like consensual sex to me at all, but the book never calls it out as rape. It does however call out the rape of a male character who regrets being seduced, showing that the author does consider such issues, just not with Ada.
Lastly, the only non-heterosexual character in this book is an older man who sexually harasses an underage boy on two occasions. This is used only as a plot device to get this boy to move to another city. My final remark is, this book was published in 1992, the author should have known better.
Now for the negatives. Firstly, Mulisch sometimes simply tried to cover too many topics. Mainly the two male main characters, but also many other minor characters, felt like collections of interesting quirks rather than real people to enable the author to deal with topics ranging from astronomy to history to politics to religion to philosophy or to enable plot developments. All these topics are interesting on their own, but when they are all put together it gets a bit crowded. It got to the point where it created a “look at how intelligent I am trying to cram this essay on the philosophy of politics in a “plausible” way into the dialogue” impression.
Secondly, the sexism annoyed me to the extent of disliking the book. Apart from the obvious situation where Ada gets turned into a breeding machine, there are many occasions where subtle sexism is thrown into the narrative. The "wonderful" expression “women belong in the kitchen” is featured several times. This direct sexism comes mainly from Onno, so at first I thought it could just be one character. However, on many other occasions and by many other characters women are denied a sense of identity and intelligence in much subtler ways. There are two scenes in particular where this happens that struck me the most. In the first scene Ada remarks that some results having to do with astronomy look like a scan of the underside of the brain. This remark is immediately met with scepticism and unbelief at how she could possibly know what the underside of a brain looks like. The two male characters expressing this scepticism were offering strange comparisons as well just seconds before without dismissing each other’s right to offer a meaningful or funny insight. In the second scene a young child is asked to identify the painters of some Easter eggs. After having correctly assigned the eggs to their male painters due to certain elements in the art which fitted their well-formed personalities, he is left with the eggs painted by the two female characters. These are described as being almost indistinguishable, having standard patterns with dots and stripes. A final scene that really tops all of this is when Ada and Max are having sex. Anna was still protesting that she couldn’t possibly have sex with him, being in a relationship with someone else, while Max just continued. This does not seem like consensual sex to me at all, but the book never calls it out as rape. It does however call out the rape of a male character who regrets being seduced, showing that the author does consider such issues, just not with Ada.
Lastly, the only non-heterosexual character in this book is an older man who sexually harasses an underage boy on two occasions. This is used only as a plot device to get this boy to move to another city. My final remark is, this book was published in 1992, the author should have known better.