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28th out of 207 books
—
24 voters
The Twin
When Henk’s twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.
After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. ‘...more
After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. ‘...more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
June 3rd 2008
by Harvill Secker
(first published 2006)
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Just finished The Twin, literally minutes ago, and want to get my thoughts down as quickly as possible. Not because I’m so very excited. It’s just that I know I have a problem doing a proper review after a few days have passed, and the truth is I don’t even know what I think of this book right now. Maybe I should let it marinate, but just in case, here goes.
The original title in Dutch is Boven Is Het Stil, which translates roughly to "Above Is Quiet." I would have liked to have known that, as th...more
The original title in Dutch is Boven Is Het Stil, which translates roughly to "Above Is Quiet." I would have liked to have known that, as th...more
Aug 06, 2012
Joy H.
marked it as keep-in-mind
Added 8/6/12
_The Twin_ (2006) by Gerbrand Bakker
I haven't read this book but I became engrossed in the GR reviews of it. I first heard of the book from a member of my GR group.
I did read several pages of this book at the Amazon web page. The web page provides a look inside the book so that a number of pages of the story can be sampled. See: http://www.amazon.com/The-Twin-Gerbra...
See the excellent (and long) GR review of this book at:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Excerpt:
==============...more
_The Twin_ (2006) by Gerbrand Bakker
I haven't read this book but I became engrossed in the GR reviews of it. I first heard of the book from a member of my GR group.
I did read several pages of this book at the Amazon web page. The web page provides a look inside the book so that a number of pages of the story can be sampled. See: http://www.amazon.com/The-Twin-Gerbra...
See the excellent (and long) GR review of this book at:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Excerpt:
==============...more
My good friend, Dagny recommended this book to me and she was right on. It's a quiet little story about the twin who survives when his brother dies of a car accident at the age of 18. The survivor was studying at university, while his brother was taking over the family business of running the sheep farm. So Helmer comes home and becomes the substitute son, living in misery with his sadistic father and his long-suffering mother. The story is set in Holland and the farm is just what you'd imagine...more
Feb 08, 2011
Elsje
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-2007,
maandboek-boekgrrls
Boven is het stil vertelt het verhaal van Helmer. Het boek begint als Helmer zijn vader 'verstoot' naar boven in de boerderij. De oude man is zwak en dat wordt er door de manier waarop Helmer hem (niet) verzorgt niet beter op. Af en toe krijgt hij iets kleins te eten. En als iemand vraagt of die zijn vader mag zien zegt hij: die slaapt. Overduidelijk heeft Helmer een diepgewortelde afkeer van zijn vader. Een oude, hulpeloze man.
Langzamerhand kom je erachter waarom dat zo is, hoe dat zo is gekome...more
Langzamerhand kom je erachter waarom dat zo is, hoe dat zo is gekome...more
Gecopieerd van
http://www.scholieren.com/boekverslag...
Deel I (blz. 7-69) : november tot kerst 2002
Helmer van Wonderen is een 55-jarige boer uit Waterland (weidegebied bij Amsterdam) die op de dag dat de roman begint zijn vader naar zijn eigen slaapkamer boven verhuist. Zelf neemt hij de slaapkamer van zijn vader beneden in gebruik. Zijn moeder is overleden en uit de reacties op de vragen van zijn vader, kan de lezer opmaken dat er een koele vader-zoonrelatie is ontstaan. Helmer geeft zijn vader...more
http://www.scholieren.com/boekverslag...
Deel I (blz. 7-69) : november tot kerst 2002
Helmer van Wonderen is een 55-jarige boer uit Waterland (weidegebied bij Amsterdam) die op de dag dat de roman begint zijn vader naar zijn eigen slaapkamer boven verhuist. Zelf neemt hij de slaapkamer van zijn vader beneden in gebruik. Zijn moeder is overleden en uit de reacties op de vragen van zijn vader, kan de lezer opmaken dat er een koele vader-zoonrelatie is ontstaan. Helmer geeft zijn vader...more
Definitely not a book for all tastes--but it surely was for mine. I read "The Twin" because a website I browse occasionally ranked it as one of the top five international novels of last year, and I'm glad I did. The style is simple, even flat, and the Dutch countryside portrayed here is bleak. The story is told my Helmer, a man in his mid-fifties, whose identical twin, Henk, died almost forty years before. Helmer still lives in the shadow of Henk and feels himself to be only half a person. He re...more
Ooo, I loved this book, but it's difficult to pin down just why. It reminds me of those fabulously arty films with long shots of a solitary person tending cattle on a farm in a bleak landscape, complete silence except for the constant moan of the wind, the odd cattle call and the cry of a bird.
But...
As the camera closes in, the muck and hard work become clear, and we see the father dying in the bedroom upstairs, surrounded by pictures of mushrooms and sheep and dead relatives.
Helmer... I half lo...more
But...
As the camera closes in, the muck and hard work become clear, and we see the father dying in the bedroom upstairs, surrounded by pictures of mushrooms and sheep and dead relatives.
Helmer... I half lo...more
Back in September, I suggested Gerbrand Bakker's 2006 novel The Twin (translated by David Colmer) as an unconventional but relevant choice for the Gothic and mystery-themed RIP Challenge V. Having now actually read The Twin, I'm pleased to say not only that I enjoyed it quite a lot, but also that I can firmly stand by my odd categorization. There are other ways to read The Twin—as a pastoral novel, or a piece of quiet psychological realism—but I thought it might be fun to spend my post reading B...more
“Everything is different when you have a coffin in your living room”
These are the kinds of sentences that fill The Twin: subtle, understated and crackling. This beautifully written novel shines with its character depiction of Helmer, a man who has made no choices in his life other than selecting the chickens for the farm. His home, the larger farm animals, his furniture and even his work clothes were passed on: choices that belonged to others.
However, the impending death of his father leads him...more
The Twin is a novel that is mesmerizing despite its seemingly bleak and somewhat pointless subject; while the blurb describes the book reasonably well, the power of this novel is revealed when you open it as it's very hard to put it down as the simple, almost stark prose takes over and one feels compelled to turn page after page
Highly, highly recommended and i advise everyone interested to check the sample from say Amazon and see why the book is so powerful; the first person narration works beau...more
Highly, highly recommended and i advise everyone interested to check the sample from say Amazon and see why the book is so powerful; the first person narration works beau...more
I'm always flattered when an author doesn't interpret her/his work for me, doesn't tell me how to feel or even what his characters might be feeling. I was taught to "show not tell" in fiction. Maybe that's why right from the start Bakker's The Twin had me "watching" it (directed by Ingmar Bergman, I think) in black and white perched on the edge of my chair. This was a two day marathon. And in the end I was awarded a quiet day of contemplation about what had happened and why, its reality and its...more
The book is strange and quite beautiful, both in the way it is written and in the scenes it conjures. It is suffused with the stillness of the watery Dutch landscape it depicts. As with the birdlife's apparitions so with the humans, it is all somehow unique yet true to an eternal nature. In its spareness, in the present tense descriptions of mundane activities and exchanges the narrative is also full; it rests in itself and breathes with nature -until it kicks with nature. It is clear and terse...more
I chose this book by searching Goodreads for Dutch authors as I was embarking on a trip to Amsterdam and needed a travel read. I tend to like somber travel reads; sets a slow pace, doesn't distract me from being in the moment of my experience, doesn't tempt me away from getting out. I suggested it for my book club and after reading a blip or two, was vetoed for being "too grey and Shipping News-ish"
The Twin, was indeed, a somber read, indeed grey, and yes, a bit Shipping News-ish. But not at all...more
The Twin, was indeed, a somber read, indeed grey, and yes, a bit Shipping News-ish. But not at all...more
A book about a Dutch fellow named Helmer who lost his identical twin brother at age 19. Forced to quite college and become a farmer, he's half a whole person, forever looking for his missing half. Not until years later when he's well into middle age, with his father fading away in an upstairs bedroom, does he begin to awaken to his full sense of self. I read this for the depiction of the Dutch countryside with its soggy ground sliced by canals and dikes, and shorebirds flying above. While not th...more
This was a beautifully contemplative novel written in my favorite Scandinavian style - very concise, with clever surprises tucked into single sentences. The way in which the book opens leads the reader to a point of view unfavorable to Helmer, with his cold detachment from his dying father, the lack of compassion present in his care, and then there is a paragraph in which the entire perception we are given of the father/son dynamic sharply pivots. That same kind of sudden pivot happens many time...more
Like many other literary prize winners, The Twin focus on internal changes and awakenings rather than plot. This elegant novel translated from original Dutch was the winner of the Dublin Literary Award, among other prizes. It traces the self realization of Helmer who 37 years after the death of Henk, the more popular twin, the "live" half of the personality the two shared, is mucking the barn, milking the cows, tending the sheep and caring for his dying father, the life that Henk was supposed to...more
I’ve just finished reading this book and should perhaps wait a day or two to write my review so that maybe my gushing and cooing about how wonderful this book is will wear off a bit. But I doubt that I’ll feel different about this book tomorrow or ten years from now. Amazing...perfect...brilliant. Leaves me utterly speechless. For me...this is what fiction is all about.
To say so much with such simplicity.
To so aptly and accurately capture the essence of a place I have never been but will recogni...more
To say so much with such simplicity.
To so aptly and accurately capture the essence of a place I have never been but will recogni...more
With prose as sparse, crisp, and clear as imagine the Scandanavian countries to be, Bakker tells the tale of a man beset by regrets as he toils away on the family farm. The protagonist, now in his 60's is caring, albeit not very gracefully, for his dying father, who years ago crushed his dream of attending a university and doing something other than farming with his life after the death of his twin brother in an automobile accident. It was this now deceased twin who was originally to take over...more
The loneliness and the wide-open interior spaces of a life half lived--such is the thematic backdrop of this melancholy but engrossing Dutch novel about a farmer who has survived the death of his twin brother only eventually to realize (decades after receiving this fundamental blow to his identity) that life does still hold something for him, something uncanny and new. By the book’s end Gerbrand Bakker’s protagonist has acquired, for us, some of the features of a great friend: both intense famil...more
Helmer is attending school in Amsterdam and is suddenly called home, when his twin brother abruptly dies. Home is a small farm in the Dutch countryside, a life Helmer was never comfortable with.
Thirty-five years later, Helmer is still at the farm, caring for a dying father, maintaining the livestock, including a pair of precocious donkeys and leading a simple, lonely life. Things begin to change, when a teenager arrives, the son of his brother’s ex-fiance. Now in his mid-50s, Helmer finally begi...more
Thirty-five years later, Helmer is still at the farm, caring for a dying father, maintaining the livestock, including a pair of precocious donkeys and leading a simple, lonely life. Things begin to change, when a teenager arrives, the son of his brother’s ex-fiance. Now in his mid-50s, Helmer finally begi...more
Choices in life. The things that could have been. Dreams that don't materialise because we think it is too late. If the setting and the wording weren't so very Dutch, I could have sworn Ishiguro had written this novel.
The Twin (the Dutch title is Boven is het stil) is the story of Helmer, who, after the sudden death of his twin brother, is expected to spend the rest of his life on his father's farm.
Counting sheep, milking cows, handling the wind mill that pumps the water out of the land - those...more
The Twin (the Dutch title is Boven is het stil) is the story of Helmer, who, after the sudden death of his twin brother, is expected to spend the rest of his life on his father's farm.
Counting sheep, milking cows, handling the wind mill that pumps the water out of the land - those...more
Slow, haunting, inward; the inward nature of the book mutes even the more active scenes for me in a way that makes them seem distant but still very real (like in a painting maybe). Dutch, this is a close cousin to Per Petterson’s work (Norwegian, OUT STEALING HORSES); the narrative is so quiet you can hear the scrape of the kitchen chairs and the tick of the clock ("Until now the lethargic ticking of the grandfather clock has suggested an atmosphere of timelessness, now it changes into the omino...more
This book is one of those books which, even having just finished it a few minutes ago, I honestly cannot say whether I loved it or hated it. The writing is certainly very beautiful, and the landscape conjured up brilliantly. But it is hard to say whether the novel has any real plot. Is it really about anything? I can, and have, appreciated many a novel with little discernible story line, and only vague, weakly drawn characters, just on the strength of its shining prose. But I am not wholly convi...more
Definitely not what you would call an 'easy read'. The author uses unnessecary repetition of uncomfortable images and moments throughout the book. I felt myself waiting and hoping for something eventful to happen right up to the last page. It never happened. However, I appreciate the authors ability to put down, in prose form, the complexities of the human mind and how it copes with a painfully mundane life. I give it three stars for this reason. Even though at times the book bored me to death,...more
in an unusual bucolic frame of mind (summer's end?), i read THE TWIN back to back with TINKERS. both very beautiful (though a beauty that, for some reason, doesn't move me much) (a perverted heart? prolly)... the TINKER'S packed, lyrical, faulkner-reminiscent style i enjoyed more. and dug greatly its foggy structure dissolving back and forth between the father and son. THE TWIN has a more traditional structure and/but it carries out its intentions with a lot of care and integrity. fathers and so...more
More like 4.5 stars.
The first thing that comes to mind is how beautiful this debut novel is. The prose is deceptively simple (I hope it's not just the translation), but it's so powerful in describing the loneliness and slowly revealing the weight and pain and scars of past toxic relations. That being said, I think the author does not wallow too much in past resentments but rather reveals them to elucidate the changes in Henk's attitude. The low-key but hopeful ending had me almost in tears becau...more
The first thing that comes to mind is how beautiful this debut novel is. The prose is deceptively simple (I hope it's not just the translation), but it's so powerful in describing the loneliness and slowly revealing the weight and pain and scars of past toxic relations. That being said, I think the author does not wallow too much in past resentments but rather reveals them to elucidate the changes in Henk's attitude. The low-key but hopeful ending had me almost in tears becau...more
A spare quiet story of an ordinary man, a farmer who feels he was put into his way of life by external circumstances that he no control over. His twin brother died when they were young men, so he ended up taking over the family farm, although he had planned to become educated at a university, and had only recently started his studies. Now it is 35 years later. His father is dying and lives, neglected, in the same house with only his son for company, who seems to hate him in a quiet sort of benig...more
Feb 23, 2011
Annarosepenny
added it
My first "book club" experience: the member who suggested this read is moving to Holland in a couple weeks. We met at Pegasus Pizza on campus, I drank a beer with my breadsticks, and reveled in the idea that the four people at the table had just read the same dull, terse book. Father's dying. There is a hooded crow in the ash tree. Since my twin died, I'm half a person. My twin's old girlfriend sends her son to be my farmhand. There are homo-erotic undertones. My life has stood still with the mi...more
Oct 16, 2010
Vincent Eaton
added it
I got to page 111 and quit. For all my belly-aching about detective and thriller novels I've been skipping through this year, and wanting some prose that gives levels and isn't entirely one dimensional, I turned to this prize winner with hopes. It is without any forward moving plot, and in the first 25 pages, the same incidents, subject matter and points were covered three times. I suppose this is literary; it is also dull, when it comes up against a quick mind that gets it, and wishes the autho...more
Beautiful writing - spare and elegant with fully realized characters especially the protagonist, Helmer, a 56 y.o. man who has yet to come to terms with the death of his twin brother more than 30 years before. The backdrop - the family farm in the Netherlands - is so palpable it will have you reaching for a sweater to stave off the chill. It is the story of one man slouching towards mental health as he shifts the balance of power in his relationship with his father. Ultimately, for me at least,...more
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Jul 01, 2012 07:56am
Jul 01, 2012 09:20am