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Loading... Caesarion roman (edition 2011)by Tommy Wieringa
Work InformationCaesarion by Tommy Wieringa    No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) parrishlantern | Jul 13, 2012 |  History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. In our time another boy, Ludwig, is born in Alexandria and again the father flees, leaving the boy and his mother to move on. She, Marthe, is stormy and vain. She will not rest until she finds their ideal home – which needs to be both dramatic and cheap, and so they end up living in some crumbling old house on the cliff tops of Alburgh in Suffolk - living in a constant state of awareness that the sea could take away all that they have. The lines written above are either direct quote or me paraphrasing the back cover of this book. We learn all this through Ludwig, who has returned to Alburgh as an adult for a funeral of his once neighbour (and the man who originally sold his mother the house). Ludwig has taken a job playing piano at a local hotel whilst waiting for the funeral & deciding his next move. At the bar of this hotel he meets this woman, Linny Wallace and over a period of a few days he tells her his life story. It’s through this medium we trace his life story from the young child in Alexandria & the disappearance of his father, through the journey back to Holland where his mother was born & onto the crumbling house on the cliff top, where they live until its collapse & his mother moves to Los Angeles. We learn that his father was an Artist, though all he appeared to do is destroy & his mother was originally a porn star. We follow this through the eyes of Ludwig, learning about the tug and pull of his claustrophobic relationship with his mother of a strange interdependence that’s part love, part horror, of him trying to discover his own father within himself. This leads to the search & discovery of his father, with it comes the realisation of how much he is his mothers son & how little of his father there is. We also follow the last days he has with his mother and watch as parental roles reverse and what was considered solid can crumble, then all that’s left is to fathom the pieces. http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/little-caesar-caesarion.html (  ) parrishlantern | Jul 4, 2012 | ) koenvanq | May 31, 2012 |
 Although perfectly charming as picaresque, the tragedy of Unger’s plight registers just as strongly as its understated oddness. There are plenty of precedents for the novel-as-game (fellow Dutch author Cees Nooteboom, for instance) but in Little Caesar, Wieringa plays for keeps. Tommy Wieringa's ambitious novel, translated by Sam Garrett, is a brilliant exploration of the uneasy transition from adolescence into adulthood – the restlessness, yearning for stability, irrational decisions and erotic obsessions.  Wieringa schreef een filosofische parabel over hoe je positief kunt omgaan met de fundamentele onverschilligheid van het leven dat, zoals bekend, alles opslokt: van de grootste beschavingen tot de kleinste garnaal. Maar ondertussen vertelt hij in geuren en kleuren een meeslepend verhaal van een jongeman op zoek naar zichzelf terwijl die de hele wereld rondtrekt. Wieringa serveert dit universele verhaal van een zoon op zoek naar (ouder-)liefde in een poëtische taal die nergens gekunsteld overkomt. Die sensuele touch was al het waarmerk van Joe Speedboot , de vorige schelmenroman van Wieringa. Maar hier wordt zijn zinnelijke taalgebruik in een veel weidser verhaal ingebed. Wie Wieringa leest, voelt na een tijdje aan den lijve de sporadische, bevlogen lichtheid van diens hoofdpersonage en glijdt dankzij Caesarion door de turbulenties van het leven. Zonder angst en vol souplesse. Wat kan je meer van een goede roman verwachten? ’Caesarion’ wil een proeve zijn van Wieringa’s meesterschap in het beschrijven van duistere obsessies en verminkte persoonlijkheden. Hij slaagt daar mijns inziens niet helemaal in omdat het perspectief eenzijdig bij hoofdpersoon Ludwig, de ik-verteller ligt, en de anderen in zekere zin geheimzinnige instanties blijven. Maar Wieringa kan meer, al komt het er in ’Caesarion’ nog niet helemaal uit. Hij is een schrijver met grensoverschrijdende ambities en mogelijkheden. Cruciaal is daarbij zijn meeslepende stijl en verteltrant. Wieringa heeft met Caesarion de roman geschreven waarin zijn oeuvre tot dusver culmineert. Af en toe scheert Wieringa langs de kitsch met zijn hooggestemde lyriek, maar telkens gaat het goed, door zijn psychologisch inzicht. Hoe geldig is zulke hemelse wijsheid? Minder universeel, dunkt mij, dan de feilloze psychologische inzichten en fraaie zinnen die Wieringa’s vitale roman ons zo gul biedt. AwardsNotable Lists
Ludwig Unter's life held such promise. His parents were artists and, from an early age, his own musical genius had marked him out for a stellar career in the world's concert halls. In his mother's imagination, Ludwig is already on the way to surpassing her most ambitious dreams for him. But in reality, and for now, he's playing in local cocktail bars and the two of them are living alone in a storm-lashed clifftop cottage in East Anglia. As the forceful winter seas bash away at the coastline, and Ludwig plunks away at the piano, he begins to tell a woman his story: a story of beauty and decay, of a child's faith and parental betrayal, and of the importance, in the end, of self-sacrifice. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)839.31Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Netherlandish literatures DutchLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.35)
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