Josse wants to fix his grandfather’s memory. Something happened to that, grandpa Jopie had a stroke. Josse tells that, because his grandfather is in the hospital when the story begins, and he will not return home for a while. Friendship and farewell are more often subjects in the oeuvre of Harm de Jonge (1939) and in his new children’s book The Birds Clock we see the friendship between a grandson and a grandfather, tense by an approaching goodbye: the crumbling consciousness of the old man.
The story we read is about the time before hospitalization. It tells how Josse worked with grandfather Jopie on a ‘bird clock’, which clearly symbolizes grandfather’s memory. They have placed a picture of Grandma under the hands, there is a cuckoo egg on top, with a hatch from which a small black bird with yellow plumes emerges. Grandpa wants the hands to go back in time. “If the clock is ticking backwards, you will naturally go with it,” he said. “Then you get the feeling that you are back in time. That way I get a little closer to Grandma, you know?”’
inertia
The Birds Clock stimulates the imagination and a clock as a symbol for memory is of course cleverly chosen. And there is a certain slowness in De Jonge’s style, who moves along nicely with the story. You read old age. The resignation of the memory: ‘A few wheels and cogs still roamed loosely about the work table. I brushed up the brass. Grandpa’s wonderful story was too difficult to grasp at once.’ Wonderful metaphors for a shattered memory. Unfortunately, De Jonge almost only describes what happened in metaphors. A slightly more concrete approach is lacking, so that you can The Birds Clock actually constantly groping in the dark for what exactly is wrong with grandpa Jopie until he eventually has a stroke. Nowhere does the story get to the core, people jump from one piece to the next, a father who left with the northern sun and a dead sister pass by sideways. Well-known stories about the gods are abandoned halfway through and are further supplemented by Grandpa Jopie’s fantasy. That and the rippling structure make it rather difficult to build a bond with the book.
get a grip
In an explanation afterwards, Harm de Jonge explains that Josse’s grandfather had a combination of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Then a lot falls into place. That may have been De Jonge’s intention. The reader becomes the Alzheimer’s patient who looks around helplessly at the narration, without getting a grip on it. Although it remains strange that the story is not told from the perspective of the grandfather himself.
Harm de Jonge is experienced enough to know that if you have to explain to the reader afterwards what the book is about that he or she has just read, there is often something wrong with the book – and unfortunately that is with The Birds Clock no less true. It is clever, courageous and original that De Jonge tries to make dementia tangible and his carefully constructed sentences and metaphors shine through the entire book, but whoever came for a beautiful story feels a bit shortchanged.