Rate this book

Der Umweg (2010)

by Gerbrand Bakker(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Suhrkamp Verlag

review 1: This was an interesting book. Not the most captivating I have read, but it was an interesting read. First, we don't get to know the name of the main character until the two last chapters. It makes the book impersonal. But it also creates a mysterious effect around the character. This is what will keep you reading. This will also make the parallel between her and Emily Dickinson easier to see. We don't have much information about her until halfway through the book. We can only feel that she isn't happy. She wants to disappear. She's in survival mode. She isolated herself from her family. The story is really about this isolation. How she's trying to rebuild herself but is actually giving up on life. The book's rythm was very slow, which made it a more difficult read. The aut... morehor really discribes every scene with a lot of details. It makes it easier to imagine, but there are far less action in the book itself. 3.5/5
review 2: This book is very Dutch. It leads you on the surface of life. Shallow water, not going deeper at any moment of it. Still it's easy to read and it's catchy. Like Balero of Ravel it creates an expectation that this quiet shallowness of being have to explode at some point of time. It doesn't really. Shallow life, shallow death. Soulless. Still, it made me thinking of you, boy... Finally you, not anybody else, is a main character of the book. less

Download links for: Der Umweg

Advertising