Renate Dorrestein (1954–2018)

A claustrophobic family drama centred around the tumbledown home — in an anarchic, peripheral community poised on the edge of the modern world — of the widowed artist Job and his crippled daughter Maria, his housekeeper and only model for many years. All sorts of generation-bending tensions come out into the open when Job brings his new and very young girlfriend Felicity into the mix, whilst Maria's son and daughter-in-law (Cas and Xandra!) are busy having a designer baby.

There's a lot show more of symbolism going on, some heavy biblical references and apocalyptic weather, and a lot of fierce criticism of our (modern?) drive to control our own bodies and environments as well as the male possession and control of women's bodies.

Dorrestein explains in an endnote that Job's painting in the story is based on Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" (1948, in the MOMA collection), but the characters are her own. show less

In 1971, the Dutch psychologist Jan Foudraine published Wie is van hout... Een gang door de psychiatrie (English: Not Made of Wood), the culmination of many years of work, observation and experimentation in psychiatric institutions. Foudraine broke through the traditional view of seeing and treating the clients as, and thereby institutionalising them as untreatable patients. Instead of continuing treatment as it had been for sometimes more than 20 or 30 years, for some of the schizophrenic show more patients at the clinic, Foudraine started treating them as individual and responsible people, aimed at returning them to some form of independent life in society. The novel Buitenstaanders (English: "Outsiders" seems inspired by Foudraine's ideas.

At the beginning of Buitenstaanders, a couple with their two children suffers and accident causing their car to land in a ditch. Seeking shelter and help, they knock at the door of a villa situated is a small copse, and are taken in by the family living there. The family is very peculiar, a bit like Pippi Longstocking. All members of the family have peculiar names, such as Ebbe, Biba, Agrippina and Lupo. Their dog is called Evertje Polder. The family prides itself to have taken in Wibbe, whom they believe to be feeble-minded.

Staying at the villa is an outrageously bewildering experience. Max, Laurie and their children stay with them for several days, during which the family prepares the birthday of Sterre. Very gradually, barely noticeable, the story takes a grim turn, as towards the end of the story characters increasingly run amok, Max is locked up, Ebbe threatens to jump of the roof, Sterre turns out to have been dead all along, and the role of Wibbe is revealed.

Buitenstaanders is a very ingenious exploration of madness. show less

Beautifully written, very unique style. Boldly described perspectives, painful to absorb, thus "Well done" Ms Dorrestein!

A terrific example of a deft translation, "Een Hart en Steen," or "A Heart of Stone," is moving family fiction. A horror befalls a close family in the Netherlands, and a mother dies. Through most of this book, I maintained the mantra, "Ann Tyler meets Alfred Hitchcock." This is a clear, vivid book, at the end of which we don't necessarily have redemption, but hope. This book recalls Kennedy's "Ironweed" at the end, where the life-worth-living is a work in progress. The "Heart" of the title show more is a play on the emotional problems of the mother, and a natural fixture at the family home.

I recommend this very highly. I don't know what other works by Ms. Dorrestein may have been translated into English, but this one is very definitely worth taking up.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2010/06/heart-of-stone-by-renate-dorrestein.h... show less