An Ordinary Saturday (2021), Lia Vogel.
We don’t just discuss books, we also identify them. A selection of recently published titles.
‘Eline waves enthusiastically from behind the window to her mother, who gets on her bicycle to the neighboring village. She goes to town by train to do some shopping for her sewing workshop. “Maybe I’ll bring a present!” Mom calls back with a cheerful wave. Eline stands and watches for a while, although Mama has long since disappeared from sight.’ Thus begins An ordinary Saturday , a novel that tells how a young mother tries to give meaning and meaning to her life from a new perspective after a serious accident. She is taken back to her childhood, a hundred years ago in North Groningen. The central figure is Vera, who, despite setbacks on the Highlands, grows into an enterprising woman who manages to escape the narrow-mindedness of her youth and climbs the social ladder. Writer Lia Vogel completed the Writers Academy in Leiden last year and presented herself An ordinary Saturday inspired by the life story of her mother from Den Andel. (JvR)
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Title An ordinary Saturday Author Lia Vogel Publisher book scout Price 21.99 euros (268 pages)
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Next month it will be four years since Frank von der Möhlen passed away, better known as the Dutch writer, photographer, performer and visual artist F. Starik. Andrea Stultiens and Vrouwkje Tuinman have compiled a book from his estate in which his mind haunts. Living as a museum contains collages, handwritten notes, correspondence, photos, a pop-up clipping, and previously unpublished poems. Like cardio in which death from heart failure is foreseen. And non-event , in which Starik, who as a poet organized Lonely Funerals in Amsterdam, describes his funeral: ‘I didn’t get anything from it myself./ It all happened and I wasn’t there./ Do you finally die, appear to be absent/ With you own death scene, you weren’t there/ (…) I’ve always counted on/ that I may still experience this, this is my party/ you wave goodbye one last time// the way it went now, it was nothing,/ a non-event, I didn’t want to go like that/ and crept back into life.’ (JvR)
Title Life as a museum. Composition Andrea Stultiens & Wife Gardener. Publisher Erven Starik. Price 34.40 (including shipping)
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Mischa van Huijstee made a remarkable contribution to the art route Folly Art in Norg last year: The Opmaat family a series of houses inspired by the tiny house movement, the children’s series barbapapa and the idea that today’s problems require customization. With his Small bird guide the versatile Van Huijstee combines his predilection for literature and nature – he was a city poet in Assen and a gardener in Smilde. His guidebook contains poem-like language experiments named after birds and illustrations that betray a preference for De Stijl, especially Bart van der Leck. The form is playful, the tone cheerful. Sparrow reads like a parody of The Sparrow by Jan Hanlo. Because of the environment, a bulb field, the chirping has changed into gestjulp. seagull was written as a complaint about the plastic soup in the seas: ‘My belly is full/ with polyester shrimps and PVC squids/ so for this occasion it/ musical/ interlude consists only of seagull vowels// ééééééééééééééh!/ thank you for your attention’. (JvR)
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Title Small bird guide. Author Mischa van Huijstee Publisher Green tuber country Price 13 euros (including shipping costs).
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Basuki Gunawan (1929 – 2014) left the young republic of Indonesia in the 1950s to study sociology in the Netherlands. He became ill, contracted TB and during his recovery in the Dutch Student Sanatorium in Laren began writing a serial about a young man who discovers that his parents’ house has been destroyed by ‘the enemy’ – his parents have been murdered and already buried. A magazine decided to publish his stories in 1954, but there was no bundling. ‘Forgotten masterpieces do not exist, but neglected ones’, writes Gustaaf Peek in the preface to this rediscovery. He places Winarta in a special list of ‘measured punches about the infringement of essentials’: The bitter herb from Marga Minco, The preserved house by WF Hermans and The Downfall of the Boslowitz Family by Gerard Rev. Also The stranger by Albert Camus is mentioned. Gunawan has written little literature after Winarta. Peek: ‘A few pieces of short prose, a handful of poems, an essay here and there, that’s how it goes sometimes.’ (JvR)
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Title Winarta Author Basuki Gunawan Publisher Alphabet Price 19.99 euros (128 pages)
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Loving a naked man is the novel debut of composer and visual artist Sarah Neutkens. It remains unclear exactly who the naked man is, but he has existed since the birth of the first person. ‘With me the naked man was born. Well, yes, he had already been alive for several years and knew nothing of my existence until I found the courage to visit him. Yet at the same time as me, there, on September 8, the naked man was born.’ Are we dealing with twins whose brother is stillborn and the sister finds him in her lovers for the rest of her life? You can’t get a grip on it, because Neutkens uses sentences full of repetitions and metaphors, interspersed with short elliptical exclamations and ecstatic passages. The publisher calls it a poetic, thrilling debut, but then the poetry is misused to justify vague language. Don’t expect characters doing or undertaking anything, don’t expect a plot. Very vague oracle language. (CP)
Title To love a naked man. Author Sarah Neutkens. Publisher Prometheus. Price 20 euro. (120 pages)