June

Finished August 23

June by Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer

I had previously read Bakker's novel The Twin and really enjoyed it. This novel is set in two time periods, both on the same day in June. On Tuesday, June 17th in 1969, Queen Juliana stops in a town for lunch. She is on a tour of this part of the Netherlands, and has already visited other towns in the morning. She is accompanied by an artist who has been commissioned to make a sculpture of her, a woman who is also a sister of the Order of the Sisters of Charity. Also accompanying her is a woman who is a representative of the government and who briefs her on the places she is visiting, the people she is scheduled to see, and other pertinent information. The Queen would prefer the young secretary travelling in another car to be her companion and thinks about how to make that change. As she meets local dignitaries and steps outside the planned itinerary a couple of times, she notices things: the people that she sees along the roads she travels, the names of farms she passes, the manner and gestures of people, shops and vehicles, landscape and more. She is polite, but also a bit of a rebel.

Several of the people she notices or interacts with are also prominent in the June decades later. It begins with a woman lying in the straw in the loft of a barn. She is thinking about the past, both the long ago past and a more recent one, her fiftieth wedding anniversary. She thinks about how different the anniversary would have been if she'd had a daughter there instead of just three sons, how more pleasant it would have gone. Her three sons are gradually revealed to the reader, Klaas, married with a daughter of his own, Dieke, who plays a large role here; Jan, who lives in Texel and has not married, and who has a task he has taken on this day in the cemetery nearby; and Johan, who has been changed due to an accident he had several years ago and lives in a group home. As we gradually learn about the woman in the hay, why she has retreated there from her family, and learn about this habit of hers when she is upset and needs to think, we also learn about the event in 1969 that changed the family forever. 

The three sons have issues of their own and these are also revealed through both their own thoughts and actions and through her memories. We see the issues in their lives and how they react to them. Dieke has her own questions about what is happening on this day. Why is her grandmother in the loft and behaving in the way she is? What is her uncle Jan doing and why? We see her interactions with her parents and her own secrets. 

There are also two other characters featured outside the family. One is the town baker, a lonely man haunted by the past, and a woman recently returned to the town who has resentments, memories, and impulses of her own. 

There are so many subtleties here, and underlying stories. Even the animals have significance, the ones on the farm, the birds in the cemetery, the various dogs who appear. Also plants from trees to potted cactuses, have a meaning and play a role in what happens.

Looking through the book again after reading, I noticed more things, and saw deeper connections between the events that occur. On the surface, little happens in the book, and yet there is so much that is revealed on these days separated by time but linked in several ways. 

The Last Train to London

Finished January 15
The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton

This novel is set mostly in the Netherlands and Austria. In the Netherlands, the main character is Truus (Geertruida) Wijsmuller-Meijer, a woman who smuggled children out of Nazi Germany, and then out of other countries controlled by the Nazis, prior to and during the Second World War. She told the children that she was saving to call her Tante Truus, and although she longed for children of her own, she and her husband Joop never were blessed with them. Truus was a real life woman who did this work, and although she was taken prisoner a couple of times by the Nazis, she lived through the war and was held in high esteem and with great affection by the children she saved. While most of Truus' story is based in fact, some small liberties were taken for the purpose of the novel.
In Austria, we follow young Stephan Neuman, born into a wealthy Jewish family who made chocolates, as he turns sixteen, seventeen, and nears eighteen as his world falls apart when the Nazis take over Austria, his parents' business, and his home in Vienna. Here we also see his little brother Walter, who has a much-loved Peter Rabbit doll he takes almost everywhere with him. Stephen wants to be a writer, specifically a playwright, and his model is Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. One of Stephen's classmates is Zofie-Helene Perger, who is a mathematical prodigy and the daughter of journalists. Her father died mysteriously on a trip to Germany before the story begins, and her mother has continued the newspaper they owned even as her own life and liberty become threatened by the Nazis.
As we see Truus' mission to save children become more difficult and dangerous, we also see her determination and the special relationship she and her husband had that made her work possible. In Austria, we see how Stephen's world collapsed so quickly from one of privilege and opportunity to one where he had to struggle just to stay alive. We see his mother's determination to save her children, despite her own illness, and the trust of young Walter that things would be better. For Zofie, we see her determination to stay true to her friendship with Stephen even when their differences in religion divided them under the Nazi regime, and how she defied her grandfather, who was trying to protect her, in helping Stephen in the ways that she could.
Clayton brings these times to life, with all the emotion that the characters felt. A great read.

The Twin

Finished April 28
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

This novel is narrated by Helmer, the surviving brother of twins. His (slightly) younger brother Henk died thirty years ago in a car accident. The car was driven by Henk's fiance, Riet. A few days after the funeral, Henk and Helmer's father told Riet to go away, that he didn't ever want to see her again.
A few years ago, Helmer's mother died, and his father is deteriorating, unable to walk. Helmer has suddenly decided to change things at the house, moving his father up to his old room, and moving himself into the bedroom on the main floor that was his parents. He cleans and paints as well, throwing out some furniture and storing other pieces in the room that was his brother's.
His neighbour Ada and her sons Teun and Ronald often stop by, although Win, Ada's husband does not. Teun and Ronald love Helmer's donkeys, crawling into their stalls, feeding them carrots. Helmer was the one who had to give up his university, stay home and become a farmer after Henk died. Henk was supposed to be the one to take over the farm, to deal with the sheep and the dairy cows. But it was expected that Helmer would take over and so he did.
Helmer's relationship with his father is a difficult one, based on a harsh upbringing and years of resentment. Helmer looks after his father's needs, but he doesn't really care for him it seems. Has he moved him upstairs as a step towards his father's eventual death?
Riet has suddenly contacted Helmer, asking him to take her son on as a farmhand. But it is uncertain whether that is all she really wants. The son, also named Henk, is still finding himself and the two men, Henk and Helmer form a relationship that is more than farmer and farmhand.
I found the ending both surprising and not. In many ways you could see it coming. This is a book of regret, of hopes, of waiting. Helmer is waiting, his father is waiting, Riet is waiting, the hooded crow that sits on the tree outside the farmhouse is waiting.

The Tulip Eaters

Finished January 15
The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten

This novel begins with a violent scene in Houston, Texas, but we soon move to The Netherlands and find that the story has its origins there as well as its conclusion.
Nora is a pediatric intern who comes home from work one day to find her mother shot dead, a man she has never seen before dead as well, and her infant daughter missing. She can't think of who would do such a thing and her heart is torn between the loss of her mother and the worry over her daughter's welfare and whereabouts. The police find the man's hotel room with a false Dutch passport as his identification. Nora knows that her parents came from Holland after the war, but doesn't know of any current contacts of her mother from the country or what someone could want with her mother or daughter.
As Nora goes through her mother's possessions she finds old identification information for both her parents that seem to indicate they were on the side of the Nazis during the war and that her father may have murdered a Jew. Unable to sit and wait, Nora uses her own contacts in the Netherlands to access war history documents to try to find out if someone related to the murdered man may have enacted their revenge in this manner.
The story here is great, but the writing less so. Melodramatic in spots with quick changes in emotion and forced actions by the characters, this book could have been so much better with some helpful editing.

Amsterdam Stories

Finished April 26
Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, selected and translated by Damion Searls

This is the first English translation of these works. Nescio (the pen name of Jan Hendrik Frederick Grönlöh (1882 - 1961)) was not prolific nor very successful until later in his writing career, but his work is now considered by some to be the best prose ever written in the Dutch language. Nescio is Latin for "I don't know."
I picked up an early copy of this collection and found it very interesting. The stories appear in chronological order of when they were written (not published) and range from 1909 to 1942. They include his major works and a selection of shorter stories, all in one slim volume.
The stories are reminiscent of youth, some of them written of the time of struggle to find one's way, and some looking back on that time. They have a flavour of loss and regret and yet are not emotional. The characters seem to be in their own world, removed from the events in the world around them.