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Joe Speedboot by Tommy Wieringa
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Joe Speedboot (2005)

by Tommy Wieringa

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1,2423615,471 (3.73)34
After surviving a coma, 13-year-old Frankie Hermans is left paralyzed, mute, and bound to a wheelchair. He sees his life as hopeless until he meets Joe Speedboat, a new boy in town whose sheer kinetic energy and boundless enthusiasm gives Frankie--and the rest of his sleepy Dutch town--a new lease on life.… (more)
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Title:Joe Speedboot
Authors:Tommy Wieringa
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Joe Speedboat by Tommy Wieringa (2005)

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» See also 34 mentions

Dutch (22)  English (13)  Danish (1)  All languages (36)
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
Note: review in English, though I read the original Dutch version. Mild spoilers.

Joe Speedboot is one of those modern Dutch classics that makes it onto many a highschooler’s literature list, as did it on mine. Perhaps indicative of the student I was back in highschool, I never read Wieringa’s text though, and everything I knew about the book going into my exams was what I read in online summaries of varying quality. This is not to say I didn’t like reading, but I was a poor planner, and I simply didn’t have enough time left.
However, just reading poor summaries made me regret not having been a better planner, as the story of Joe Speedboot stuck with me.

Now, years later, I finally got around to picking up a copy and took the time to read it. As I knew the story but never read the original text, it was an odd sensation of familiarity, like coming back to a town you have visited years ago, and though much is the same, an equal amount has changed. And perhaps this sensation is fitting for the nature of the book.

Fransje Hermans is already disappointed with life, at least with how life is in a sleepy Dutch town in the nineties of the twentieth century, at thirteen. Although he may not have made the conscious decision that he wants to die, something makes him lay down in that field of tall grass with the knowledge that it will be mowed by large, industrial mowers, and something keeps him from getting up despite the sound of the mower getting ever closer.
In his own words, only one thing makes him turn back to the light after all days in a comatose state, the coming of whom he believes to be a messiah, someone who will alter life for the better, Joe Speedboot.

Joe Speedboot combines classical elements of Dutch literature, (the echo of the second world war, a disillusioned protagonist and a naturalistic setting) with fantastical events ripped straight out of a book for mischievous young boys. What books like those never show, however, is that even mischievous boys don’t stay young forever. In the Dutch nineties of Joe Speedboot, even Peter Pans have to grow up and have to deal with reality. Can a messiah exist in an ever more secularized society?

Besides being touching, exciting, humorous and gritty, in the present day Joe Speedboot is also becoming a testimony to a bygone age. ( )
  Tiborius | Jul 31, 2023 |
A quirky coming-of-age novel set in an archetypically shut-in small community behind the dyke of one of the Great Rivers that cross the middle of the Netherlands. Lomark is a place so obscure that when Rijkswaterstaat finally decide to build a bypass around it, they don't bother to provide the villagers with a connection, and it seems their only way out in future will be over Piet Honing's ferry.

The chronicler of Lomark life is Frans, who has lost the use of both legs and one arm in an accident in his mid-teens, and doesn't hesitate to see the worst in those around him. But he does form a bond with another outsider in the village, the boy who insists on being called Joe Speedboat, and with a couple of other slightly less marginal teens. Where Frans is necessarily someone who spends most of his time sitting in his wheelchair and watching, Joe takes life in both hands, committing himself to projects that should be well beyond his skill level, quite apart from being things no sane adult would allow him to do. Wieringa allows himself a bit of Tom Sawyerish bending of realism here to demonstrate how Joe's absolute conviction that he can do something usually permits him to achieve it, even if the results aren't always what he might wish. Joe's Egyptian stepfather Mahfouz ("Papa Africa") is credited with a similar semi-magical ability to complete projects.

This isn't exactly an escapist fantasy about adolescence, though. We're always being pulled down to earth by Frans's darkly cynical realism, and we are shown that these kids don't live happily ever after — they suffer the same fate as all the rest of us, and turn into adults who have to deal with the pointlessness, mediocrity and arbitrary pain of real life.

Wieringa is very good at what he does, there are a lot of sharp observations of provincial, working-class Dutch culture and some good jokes. But it's a bit hard to say whether there's any more than that. ( )
  thorold | Oct 14, 2021 |
Joe Speedboat really is Tommy Wieringa's tour de force. The book brims over with energy in an authentic and unparallelled way. The great atmosphere of this book is incomparable to anything else I have ever read. One of my most pleasant reading surprises. ( )
  Frans_J_Vermeiren | Jan 6, 2016 |
"Non è a questo che servono gli amici, a riconoscere in te cose che tu non avevi visto?" ( )
  barabarol | Jan 17, 2014 |
Wow, ik weet niet zeker waarom ik zo lang gewacht heb met het lezen van dit boek. Het past helemaal in mijn straatje, maar ik kon denk ik niet helemaal geloven dat een Nederlandse auteur dit soort werk geloofwaardig zou kunnen doen. Er gebeurt zo lekker veel. Een echte coming-of-age novel met echte helden en toch geen platte personages. ( )
  teunduynstee | Dec 27, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Tommy Wieringaprimary authorall editionscalculated
Garrett, SamTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Er wordt gezegd dat de samoerai
een tweevoudige Weg heeft,
van het penseel en de zwaard.

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI
Dedication
Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Voor Rutger Boots
First words
Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Het is een warm voorjaar, in de klas bidden ze voor me omdat ik al meer dan tweehonderd dagen van de wereld ben.
Quotations
De knalpijpen glansden als bazuinen, de wereld leek te verschroeien in allesverzengend lawaai wanneer de jongens het gaspedaal intrapten met de koppeling in, alleen om te laten weten dat ze bestonden, zodat níemand daaraan zou twijfelen, want wat niet weerkaatst, bestaat niet. (Tzumprijs 2006)
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After surviving a coma, 13-year-old Frankie Hermans is left paralyzed, mute, and bound to a wheelchair. He sees his life as hopeless until he meets Joe Speedboat, a new boy in town whose sheer kinetic energy and boundless enthusiasm gives Frankie--and the rest of his sleepy Dutch town--a new lease on life.

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When Frankie Hermans emerges from a coma after 200 days, he knows his life is never going to be the same again. For a start, he can't talk, he can't walk and it's a struggle even to wield a pen. And then there's Joe Speedboat - a boy who arrived in the sleepy village of Lomark like a blazing comet and who's been stirring things up ever since. Whether setting off bombs, racing mopeds or building a bi-plane, Joe has the touch of a magician and the spirit of a daredevil. He also sees a use for Frankie's good right arm beyond writing: as a champion arm-wrestler Frankie will be strong enough to impress his friends, and maybe even win the favour of the gorgeous, golden-haired girl who has them all in a spin. Full of vitality, verve and chutzpah, "Joe Speedboat" tells the fast-paced story of an unlikely friendship between two boys, and of their lightning dash towards adulthood.
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