begeerte heeft ons aangeraakt - bert natter
First off, I was very happy to see this book - Bert Natter is a great friend of my idol Ronald Giphart, and I was so pleased to see him publish a novel after many years of wanting to be a great writer. And then when I had gotten the book from the library, after getting through the trouble of making a reservation, I was really reluctant to read it. What if Begeerte Heeft Ons Aangeraakt was crappy? That would be so disappointing... So the book sat untouched on my table for weeks, and now it's at least three weeks overdue at the library and I can't renew it because others have reserved it.
But I needn't have worried: it's quite good. Not perfect, and the end sort of annoyed me (that's probably not Natter's fault, I'm notoriously hard to please with endings), but certainly entertaining, original, weird, well-written. Natter even manages to (mostly) pull of sections written in second person, which isn't exactly my favourite either, and which is very hard to get right - or even right enough to not get yourself thrown across a room around here. I just wish he hadn't done that one thing at the end, even though I expected it to happen. And I would have liked to hear more about the dead friend - I thought he was more interesting than the sister.
All in all, another good experience with a Dutch novel. What is the world coming to?
07-01-2009
