In a somewhat roundabout way, looking for a book by another Dutch writer, I recently came across two novels by Gerbrand Bakker: The Twin and The Detour. Both have won prestigious literary prizes. The Twin won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2010; and The Detour has just been announced as winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2013. I read them both, one shortly after the other, and will add my sixpenceworth of recommendation.
Bakker writes in a spare, restrained style, in which, in both books, he traces emotions of the deepest kind but that often remain unspoken between the protagonists. The Twin is about a man who lost his twin brother at an early age and the way in which the loss has affected his life and his relationship with his father, whom he now looks after in bedridden old age. The Detour follows a Dutch woman, now terminally ill, to Wales. She is much concerned with the life and work of Emily Dickinson, and she forms a relationship with a young Welshman who also helps her in the cottage and on the property she is temporarily renting. Their relationship is central to the unfolding story and produces a remarkable denouement.
If I had to choose between the books, my preference is for the second of them. But both are exceptionally good, and Bakker’s is quite different from any other literary voice I know.