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De Zomer Van De Beer (2010)

by Bella Pollen(Favorite Author)

3.62 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Artemis & Co

review 1: A lovely, bittersweet tale of a family's struggle to come to terms with the loss of their husband/father, and the fact it is unknown whether it was suicide, murder or an accident. The story is particularly tragic for Jamie, who fails to understand the various euphemisms used instead of the word 'death', and thinks his father is lost somewhere, needing to be found. The role played by the bear is also lovely and based on real life. It was a very easy to read book and after a few pages it drew me in. My only complaint is that in a book of nearly 450 pages, the ending felt rather crammed into the last few pages and seemed a little incomplete. "Life was unfinished business. It was time to begin living it."
review 2: This is one of those books that creeps up on you. ... moreAt first it seemed rather slow, but as it developed, suddenly all sorts of pieces started to fall together. Nicky is a British diplomat during the Cold War, who falls (jumps?) from the top of his office building in Bonn one evening. His wife is shattered, his fellow diplomats start investigating him for treason, and his children are confused. His wife takes them to an island in the Hebrides which was her childhood retreat, to try to heal. As she retreats into her own sorrow, the oldest daughter falls in love with the son of the "Paki" peddler (who turns out to actually be Syrian), the middle daughter acts out by shoplifting from the village store, and picking on her admittedly odd little brother. Meanwhile the brother just thinks his father is lost and sends messages out in bottles to tell him where they are. He later decides that his father is dead, but has come back in the form of a tame bear who escaped his master while out for a swim in the ocean one day and is lost somewhere on the island. As the family figures out what was going on in Nicky's life at the time of his death, they also begin to heal. less

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