- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st Edition edition (Nov 1 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0151005664
- ISBN-13: 978-0151005666
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.1 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 612 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #267,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
There's a scene in Nooteboom's latest novel that functions like the keynote to a score. Arno Tieck, an old German scholar, tells the well-known story of Hegel's remark, after he "heard the distant roar of Napoleon's cannons from his study in Jena," that history was already over. While this was a stimulating observation in Hegel's time, almost 200 years later it seems more like an observation about cultural exhaustion. Arthur Daane, a 42-year-old Dutch documentary filmmaker living in Berlin, is indeed weary. His wife, Roelfje, and his son, Thomas, died in a plane crash. He keeps company with four friends (Arno; Arno's sister-in-law, Zenobia Stejn; a stout Russian physicist; and Victor, a Dutch sculptor) who exchange bon mots in Berlin restaurants. Popular topics with this crowd are the guilt of the Germans, the difference between German and Dutch character, and Berlin's multiple layers of history. Arthur is whisked from this dishearteningly abstract atmosphere by a fierce young Spanish-Dutch student, Elik Oranje. Elik is a beautiful woman with "Berber eyes, " a distinctive scar on her right cheekbone and very mysterious habits. Arthur is a bit tepid for amour fou, but their affair is passionate. He breaks her spell for a while by accepting a job to make a film in Estonia, and then in Japan, but when she heads for Spain, Arthur eventually follows. Nooteboom's attempt at an intellectual novel is worthy of respect, but Arthur and his friends are frustratingly static in their habits and thoughts, their perorations inflated with hot air. More enervating than invigorating, the book fails to communicate the vitality of a life of thought.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This is an imposing and richly nuanced novel by acclaimed Dutch writer Nooteboom. In a book that is part love story, part novel of ideas, Nooteboom tells a poignant story about two unlikely lovers while also exploring complex questions related to history, memory, and personal loss. Set in Berlin, a city ideally suited for such a meditation, the book resonates with great power and emotion. Protagonists Arthur and Elik are haunted by personal calamities. Arthur, philosophical and quiet, is a documentary filmmaker attempting to recover from the loss of his wife and child in a plane accident. Elik, impulsive and mysterious, is a graduate student who is still deeply troubled by a traumatic childhood incident. Desperately lonely, they are, unfortunately, able to achieve only fleeting moments of tenderness and understanding together. This is a very accomplished novel that demands to be read at its own paceslowly, with each detail savored. Readers who bring the requisite patience to this endeavor will be richly rewarded. Enthusiastically recommended for all libraries.Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Arthur Daane was several steps away from Schoeler's Bookstore before he realized that a word had stuck in his head and that he had already translated it into his own language. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Arthur Daane was several steps away from Schoeler's Bookstore before he realized that a word had stuck in his head and that he had already translated it into his own language. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to see the world,
By
This review is from: All Souls' Day: A Novel (Hardcover)
This novel develops in a much slower, traditional way than Nooteboom's other novels but this slowness is appropriate for the subject matter. The strength of this novel is the incredible way Nooteboom through words, allows us to see the world as Arthur sees it - he processes visual images not words or logical formulations. We are drawn into his experience of verbal overload, of stumbling to say in words what is known in visual or aural images. The second success of the novel is it's accurate portrayal of a specific intellectual time - Hegel, Camus, Volans, Pedereski, Hildegard ... it was so familar as to be eerie ... for the novel Berlin with Dutch, German, Russian individuals. And yet in some strange way the same as my college days in rural Wisconsin with students from Uganda, Honduras ... In some way Nooteboom has captured the intellectual life of an era and successfully made it universal. Throughout the novel - verbally and by plot - the volume addresses the issue of history - personal, recent, and ancient. The juxtaposition of Arthur's visual record of history, of his friend's intellectual understanding and of his "girl friend's" archival search for history is effective at forcing the reader to think. Often this is done by small details - a statue that fallen still has a cap in place where a real cap would have fallen off, the timeless sound of conches in Japanese monasteries, the sound of tires on wet pavement ... This is a novel that challenges the way you perceive the world rather than simply presenting the challenge that Arthur is facing. Arthur having lost wife and child in an airplane accident is forced to reevaluate his world. The novel says the rest of us should do so without a prod like Arthur's.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the world's best living writers,
This review is from: All Souls' Day: A Novel (Hardcover)
I just finished reading this book and cannot recommend it enough. It is a sort of novel of ideas that encompasses traditional German philosophy as well as more modern issues. The story and characters are strong, and the portrayal of Berlin as an historical but ever-changing city is dead-on. This novel is longer than most of Nooteboom's others, but just as good a starting place if you're unfamiliar with his books.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not really a novel,
By
This review is from: All Souls' Day: A Novel (Hardcover)
Maybe this book is really travel literature. The characters aren't important, but place (Berlin) and history are. The book meanders like travel literature, which is pleasant, but doesn't have the tight structure of a novel like The Following Story or In the Dutch Mountains.
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