Holidays in France - II

At the end of our holiday the children make some friends and disappeared during the day. That made us discovery the concept of free time, which we filled with lectures. Since I finished my books very fast, I decided to read the books that Loes had finished, and get acknowledged with Dutch contemporary literature.

The last book I have read (I'm still reading I must admit, is Terug naar de Kust from Saskia Noort. It is one of the worst novels I ever read in my life. It's designed to be read by Libelle's reader, actually it could have been published over there in episode, was not for the fact that Libelle had better things to publish. It is supposed to be a thriller, but it is just a sequence of words describing useless details (we checked with our hands whether the tub water was at the right temperature, and then we had a bath...). Women, especially young mother, dynamic, holding their life and full of feelings, are the heroins; all villains, suspected or real, are male, since the evil is male, fortunately. Instead of being a story of threatening, misfacts and fear, is the story of a neurotic young mother, who feels justified of every single act because of her feelings. I suspect the author didn't write it like this purposely, she probably had no other choice. Reading this novel is educative, since it shows how bad a novel can be written, in absolute terms.

The second novel I have read is Tirza, written by the dutch celebrity Arnon Grunberg. Also this is a book about family life, since there is probably nothing else to write about in The Netherlands. But in this case, despite the literary prices (can you imagine, the guy won a price organized by its editor, twice!), the book is good. There's again a lot of detail, every fact seems to carry with it a deep significance; the story is slow and intense, and everything seems to happen inside the characters, even though there is a lot of things happening outside. A sentence remain impressed in my mind from this book: "sex is humiliation". In the book it has to do with the fact that the main character loved to have is dick licked after some anal sex with his cleaning lady, but it has its impact also outside that context. Tirza is a nice snapshot into family life, or maybe more than that, it is a X-ray picture, an MR-scan - you see everything what's behind the curtain.

This is the first time I read a book my wife has read. It feels strange and good at the same time. Reading is an individual experience, but reading the same book in a short time enables a very special kind of sharing.