There will be a club. Important messages have been sent already. If anybody wants to ruin it,he will be punished.Eleven-year-old Elmer inhabits a childhood of superstition,private lore and secret societies. When a new boy,pale,spindly Werther,arrives in the neighbourhood,a subtle game of fascination and persecution begins.In wartime Amsterdam,a young boy watches as Germans occupy the city. At first his parents'friends,the Boslowits family,think they have little to fear. Then,slowly,terribly,their fate is sealed.These two haunting novellas,from the acclaimed author of The Evenings,evoke the world of childhood,in all its magic and strangeness,darkness and cruelty. Here,the things seen through a child's eyes are far from innocent.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781782274599Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Profoundly unsettling and haunt(s) the mind for long afterwardsThese two posthumously published novellas by the Dutch writer Gerard Reve,skilfully translated by Sam Garrett,show he was capable of enormous and often unsettling powerReve (has the ability)... to wring menace out of things left unsaidIn a distinctive voice that captures childish incomprehension while still conveying what is missed by the still immature mind,the two works collected in Childhood are dark and even unpleasant,but both strong and impressivePraise for The EveningsA masterpiece... What can I say that will put this book where it belongs,in readers'hands and minds... Reve keeps the reader breathless right through to the grand finaleA masterwork of comic pathos... one of the finest studies of youthful malaise ever written... Should cause many readers to revise their opinions of The Catcher in the Rye. In all fairness to Salinger,The Evenings is so much betterI was also pleased to see Gerard Reve's funny,poignant debut novel,The Evenings,available in English... it's like BS Johnson and Kafka wandering the crepuscular streets of 1940s Amsterdam together - in a good wayGives Kafka a run for his money... gripping,often very funny... bizarre,enchantingThe funniest,most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written. If The Evenings had appeared in English in the 1950s,it would have become every bit as much a classic as On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye.Dark masterpiece... It is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving,middle-class parents and friendsA Meursault-in-waiting,a blank Holden Caulfield,a precursor to the kid in Iain Bank's The Wasp Factory. Very goodThis 1947 Dutch novel,considered the Netherlands'greatest in the 20th century... is a savage novel,full of strange,cold laughterReve's keen eye for absurdity manages to cast the mundane in a new,albeit macabre,lightThe Evenings is packed with the minutiae of life: luckily,the minutiae are fascinating... Reve isn't the kind of novelist to give you a straightforward answer but the journey is quite a rideA classic of dry,dark humour... it captures a very specific flavour of ennuiFascinates the more you read of it... A fantastic novelThe novel is dark,funny,unsettling and lingers vividly in the mind. Hats off to Pushkin Press and the outstanding translator,Sam Garrett,for making this odd,orphaned masterpiece available at last to an English-speaking readershipIt is now time for a wider audience to discover its weird textures and dark delightsUnlike John Williams,Gerard Reve's work was critically acclaimed and sold exceptionally well during his lifetime. But,just like Stoner,The Evenings is brilliantly written,and has a maximum impact on the reader's soul.Gerard Reve's sardonic classic The Evenings is finally translated into EnglishThis book,an important classic in the Netherlands and long,long overdue in English,is as funny as it is peculiar. Reve really deserves more attention in the Anglophone world
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