Overview

"When his twin brother is killed in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to give up university to take over his brother’s role on the small family farm, resigning himself to spending the rest of his days ""with his head under a cow."" The novel begins thirty years later with Helmer moving his invalid father upstairs out of the way, so that he can redecorate the downstairs, finally making it his own. Then Riet, the woman who had once been engaged to marry Helmer’s twin, appears and asks if her troubled eighteen-year-old son could come live on the farm for a while. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, The Twin ultimately poses difficult questions about solitude and the possibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity, a world culturally apart yet laden with familiar longing."

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9781935744047

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Reviews

After finishing 'The Twin, ' all the reader can say is: here is a true writer. <br> --Het Parool <br> The charm of Bakker's book is how finely every element is balanced, how perfectly the story is paced. ... Bakker shows a fine gift for laconic comedy. ... The great pleasure of this novel is how it has just enough plot to allow us to relish its beautifully turned observations of birds and beasts, weather and water. <br> --Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books <br> Tense with unuttered yearning ... The greatness of this book lies ... in a mounting intricacy of feeling as life begins to burgeon out of a stony, wasted existence. ... But instead of something terrible happening ... rillets of sweetness and joy arise, little springs of gladness. ... In the end ... this becomes a kindhearted book, kind to both characters and reader. <br> --Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe <br> The novel has all the careful observation and and delicate shading of a painting by one of the Dutch masters - Bakker sees beauty and complexity in the smallest corners of everyday life and portrays them with a quiet mastery that gives his story both great weight and great lightness. <br> --The Quarterly Conversation <br> Gerbrand Bakker's writing is fabulously clear, so clear that each sentence leaves a rippling wake. <br> -Susan Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times <br> Stealthy seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. <br> --Tim Parks <br> This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. <br> --Times Literary Supplement <br> Bakker is above all a gifted stylist. His dialogue is exemplary, and the descriptions of nature have a natural charm worthy of Nescio. It is a long time since we've taken such pleasure in a genui

WINNER - THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDA novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. --Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker's tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters' tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one's faith in meticulous realism. --Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. --Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition.

WINNER - THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. --Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker's tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters' tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one's faith in meticulous realism. --Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. --Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition. WINNER - THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. --Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker's tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters' tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one's faith in meticulous realism. --Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. --Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition. WINNER - THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker s tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one s faith in meticulous realism. Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [ ] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition. After finishing 'The Twin, ' all the reader can say is: here is a true writer. --Het Parool The charm of Bakker's book is how finely every element is balanced, how perfectly the story is paced. ... Bakker shows a fine gift for laconic comedy. ... The great pleasure of this novel is how it has just enough plot to allow us to relish its beautifully turned observations of birds and beasts, weather and water. --Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books Tense with unuttered yearning ... The greatness of this book lies ... in a mounting intricacy of feeling as life begins to burgeon out of a stony, wasted existence. ... But instead of something terrible happening ... rillets of sweetness and joy arise, little springs of gladness. ... In the end ... this becomes a kindhearted book, kind to both characters and reader. --Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe The novel has all the careful observation and and delicate shading of a painting by one of the Dutch masters - Bakker sees beauty and complexity in the smallest corners of everyday life and portrays them with a quiet mastery that gives his story both great weight and great lightness. --The Quarterly Conversation Gerbrand Bakker's writing is fabulously clear, so clear that each sentence leaves a rippling wake. -Susan Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times Stealthy seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement Bakker is above all a gifted stylist. His dialogue is exemplary, and the descriptions of nature have a natural charm worthy of Nescio. It is a long time since we've taken such pleasure in a genuinely Dutch novel. --Truow This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force but is open-ended, its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfilment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. Human dramas are offset by landscape and animals feelingly delineated, and David Colmer's translation is distinguished by an exceptional (and crucial) ear for dialogue. --Paul Binding Bakker has a gift for investing daily rituals and landscape with the universal questions around identity and self worth. Helmer's transformation affirms that it is never too late to take responsibility for one's destiny. This is a beautifully written book - its lustre lies in the clear simplicity of language as well as the authenticity of Helmer's internal dialogue. --Ruth Wildgust, The Sunday Business Post (Ireland) Bakker captures the feel of life in the Dutch countryside in a style which is both dazzling and subdued. ... a poignant story, recounted in a tone at once spare and loving. --De Volkskrant A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee WINNER - THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDA novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. --Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker's tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters' tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one's faith in meticulous realism. --Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. --Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition. A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor. --J.M. Coetzee Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end. --Tim Parks This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force . . . its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfillment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. --Paul Binding I have rarely been so captivated by a voice. The plot of this unusual novel is simple, but its power is mysterious. Gerbrand Bakker's tone and language make the despondent yet valiant narrator utterly authentic and the plain rural setting mesmerizing. The family drama has the quality of myth, yet remains rooted in daily reality, so much so that I responded with the innocent surrender of a child reader: I had lived on that Dutch farm and shared the characters' tragedies and small triumphs. This is a book that restores one's faith in meticulous realism. --Lynne Sharon Schwartz I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again. --Amy Waldman, All Things Considered, NPR This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour [...] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland. --Times Literary Supplement From the Hardcover edition.

Author Information

"Gerbrand Bakker studied Dutch historical linguistics and worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. His previous books include an etymological dictionary for children and the young adult novel Perenbomen bloeien wit (Pear trees bloom white). The Twin appeared in Dutch in 2006 and was awarded the Golden Dog-Ear, a prize for the bestselling literary debut in the Netherlands. David Colmer is a writer and translator. He translates Dutch literature in a wide range of genres including literary fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and poetry. He is a two-time winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize, most recently for Gerrit Achterberg’s poem ""The Poet as a Cow."""

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