Willem Elsschot is one of my favorite authors. His stories always have something tragic, something in doing business that goes terribly wrong. This time with cheese. As the seller doesn't have experience, is busy bragging and decorating his office, while his son only sells a little cheese and he himself nothing.

Another good read, recommended.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2009/1... ( )

Cheese is a simple and sad parable about a man who tries to do, and be, what others expect of him rather than simply being himself.

Frans Laarmans has worked for 30 years as a clerk for a shipping company in Antwerp, Belgium. Despite his modest income, he has a decent house, plenty to eat and drink, a loving wife and two fine children. As the novel begins, he learns that his aged mother is dying. At her bedside we observe something important about Frans: Every action he takes, what he says, whether he sits or stands, smiles or cries, is based on what he thinks others expect of him.

After his mother's funeral, Frans falls in with a man named Van Schoonbeke whose pretensions to social and material success soon have Frans copying him. Before long, the naive Frans has let himself be nudged into taking up a windfall business opportunity: He is now the wholesale representative for Belgium and Luxembourg for a Dutch cheese company. Twenty tons of Edam is on its way to him by rail, and he hasn't a clue what to do with it.

Frans's misadventures with cheese are not the hilarious comedy that some of the book jacket blurbs lead one to expect. There is some humor, but more sadness in the predicament Frans has gotten himself (and his family) into. All too many real life people have suffered from an ill-advised grasp at quick riches. Cheese is a simple story about one such person and the lesson he learns. ( )

leuke satire

A very funny book, but a tender one, even moving. Very economical, it brings Depression-era Belgium to life, portraying a lower-class bourgeois family intimately and sympathetically with virtually no sentiment. http://cshere.blogspot.com/2008/12/wh...

Stick to your own game. Playing a game your not made to play might get you into a smelly situation! Elsschot has a wonderfully clear way of narration. ( )