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Loading... Een dwaze maagd (1959)by Ida Simons
Work InformationA Foolish Virgin by Ida Simons (1959)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Short and sweet, a cross between the narration of To Kill A Mockingbird and the plot of The Go Between, with a poignant hidden depth of meaning. Must read again for the details I probably missed! ( ) Narrator Gittel looks back to her life aged 12/13 in a Dutch Jewish family. It's the 1920s and the family are flawed and comical- squabbling parents, Mother going back to stay with her family in Antwerp at regular intervals. Here Gittel befriends the much older Lucie Mardell; flattered by her friendship, Gittel is - obviously to the reader but not Gittel- embraced as a 'chaperone' to allow a romance to continue unremarked. Mildly interesting, evokes a time and an era; the sadness comes from the knowledge of the author spending time in Westerbork Concentration Camp. One can certainly read this as an allegory of the blindness and 'foolishness' of those Jews who didnt realise what was being planned all around them (although no mention of politics/ antisemitism enters the story.) As a 2020 reader, one thinks too of the pandemic hoax being currently rolled out onto as credulous and eager-to-believe-the-propaganda populace... "....humour is the colourful piece of cloth made to cover a wound". Simon´s humour relies on the juxtaposition between the quick eye of a 12 year old girl who picks up everything that goes on around her and the immature voice and analyzing apparatus of the innocent with which she tells and interprets what is happening around her. The reader of course understands, and the differences between the child´s and the grown up´s interpretation comes across as very, very funny. "The Foolish Virgin", the book´s title and the fact that the author of the girl who remembers, Ida Simons survived the concentration camp both at Westerbork and Theresienstadt, are the only things that gives away the book´s serious theme. "The Foolish Virgin" is an allusion to the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (Mathew 25). The parable begins: “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to..... " What Simon describes through the voice of Gittel, is a paradise; people are poor, but live good lives, the "catastrophes" are the ups-and-downs of daily life, that really are of no consequence. People want it to be so, the harsher side of reality are not confronted. When Gittel`s friend Aaron dies from polio, death is elaborately hidden from her. None of her memories touches anything near the dark political reality her family´s story is set within, being a jew in a growing anti-Semitic Europe which, again of course reflects the community´s (active) lack of interest. The one person that nearly uncovers the truth about Aaron, tells her not to grow up as "a foolish virgin", is considered mad by the rest of the community. They are collectively like the " "virgins who forgot to bring oil to the lamps"..... Ida Simons define what foolishness is: This is not a book about a child´s innocence, child innocence is used to reflect how unaware the Jewish communities of Europe was when WWII came. It is a picture of the innocence of the blind, of the ostrich. She points the finger at the same thing which later became Hannah Arendt´s message. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesA tot vent (657)
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families". After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash. Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period. Translated from the Dutch by Liz Waters No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)839.3164Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Netherlandish literatures Dutch Dutch letters Enlightenment 1671-1795LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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