03 / Chapter 3
Books
Option 2
Next Stop: Wonderland
Available on April 5th, 2023
Next stop: Wonderland
256 pages
isbn: 9789462972599
paperback € 21,50
isbn: 9789462972605
eBook € 9,99
Four distinctive Bostonians have all their quirks humorously magnified.
The single and somewhat elderly Alan Riding teaches creative writing at a small university near Boston.
Among his friends are Caroline, a professor of literature at an all-girls college, his upstairs neighbour, Alisa, a painter and happiness coach, and his colleague, Ron, a Dutch expat.
Next stop: Wonderland humorously describes their big and small worries, from Alan’s
doubts about the value of his own workshops, to Ron’s
frustrations about anything and everything, to Alisa's adventures in positive psychology.
On top of that, an unexpected affair is in the making between two of them. They both thought that they were happily married.
The novel gives a clear and satirical insight into Boston’s literary and academic culture, which Alan and the others are blindly navigating.
The novel is Geert van der Kolk’s loving goodbye to America, which he called his home for many decades.
The Boys
Media response:
"Certainly good."
Scholieren.com
Jan Mendel is a boy with a rich imagination, but most thoughts are bout ... the girls. The Boys is an exuberant novel about the adventure of being young, about the discoveries, passion and humor. It is, in Jan's own words, a book with open arms.
My name is Jan Mendel. I grew up with sea breeze in my hair and in my nose the pure aroma of algae, fuel oil and the fish market.
On dance class we held each other firmly and I managed to touch her breasts with my neat white shirt every time I stepped towards Lydia at the cha-cha-cha.
Who ever made up that puberty is a bleak intermezzo between youth and real life? I was thirteen and very happy.
It was love at first sight. I don't really believe in that at all, but this was the exception to the rule. It wasn't because Lenie was so beautiful. She was, but if you are a bit active in life, you will meet a beautiful girl every day.
I swore a holy oath: I would go with Bart to Terschelling during the summer holidays, become stoned like a monkey and only come back if I had done it in real life, literally, in person, from alpha to omega.
North Tide
Media response:
"Breathtaking narration. Geert van der Kolk is a writer to discover."
AD Magazine
North Tide is a novel about a grand and exciting adventure on board the polar ship Gerrit de Veer. The ship sets sail from Newfoundland to the Arctic in the spring of 1882 for a scientific expedition.
The Dutch scientists are well prepared and accompanied by the ship's sailors, an Ice Master, and three Eskimos with dog sleds.
The journey goes to Ellesmere, an uninhabited, virtually unknown mountain and glacier-covered area between Greenland and the North Pole.
The crew faces storms at sea,, icebergs, polar bears and blinding snowdrifts. When the Gerrit de Veer threatens to be caught in the pack ice, conflicts erupt between the members of the expedition and the sailors, and they realize that the greatest danger lies not in nature, but in their own human shortcomings. When the polar night begins, mistrust, demoralization and tragic mistakes lead to a shocking denouement.
Telegram for Mecánico
Media response:
"(...) an ingeniously composed story (...) * ***"
DeRecensieNL
Telegram for Mecánico tells the intriguing story of an ordinary man in a fishing village in the Dominican Republic. His nickname is Mecánico because he is a mechanic. He has almost forgotten his real name, until one day he receives a strange telegram: he has to come to Malabacoa because his father is dying there. But his father drowned at sea thirty years ago. Curious, he travels to the remote
mountain village of Malabacoa.
There awaits him a shocking experience that later,when he returns to his own village, it will lead to a dramatic and violent denouement. Telegram for Mecánico is a novel about deceit and loss, an exciting and mysterious crime story and at the same time a poignant portrait of a lonely man in an unequal battle against the established order, the past and his own heart.
The Water Seller
Media response:
"Lifelike, poignant and extremely strong. As penetrating and compact as Van der Kolk tells the drama, there is no way around it. **** ''
de Volkskrant
In Miami, police arrest a young man who just arrived from Haiti in a self-made sailboat. They found the boat and the dead body of one of the other crewmembers. The young man now threatens not only deportation, but also imprisonment or the electric chair for murder. On the advice of his lawyer, he writes down his life story in court. He unadornedly sketches the world in which he grew up, a world full of poverty and decay, crime and superstition, a world in which lies, deceit and betrayal determine the mutual relationships.
His only defense is his willpower, his sarcasm and a dark sense of humor. As he writes, his factual account turns into an adventure novel, a raw crime story and a heartbreaking autobiography.
Käte Jahn
Review:
"Very convincing."
Free Netherlands
"The best book of 1991."
Common Press Service
The novel Käte Jahn tells the story of a young Dutch historian who expects action and adventure from life and does not worry about simply becoming a teacher. He travels to East Germany during the time when the Berlin Wall is still an inexorable barrier. In East Berlin he lives in the demi-monde of communism, a dilapidated and grotesque world full of colorful weirdos.
East Berlin, however, is mainly the
city of Käte Jahn, a young singer who improvisesand leads a risky life.
Käte Jahn is a compelling novel about love in a world for cynicism and dictatorship, where cruel misunderstandings are the rule and the desire for freedom can have tragic consequences, but also a beautiful portrait of a woman who gets lost in the time when she is doomed to life.
Little America
Media response:
'Different than usual (...) Very different'
The hero of the stories in Little America is a village. It is located "two hours south of St. Louis, between the river and the horizon," thousands of miles from New York and Washington and infinitely removed from the clichés of US life.
The inhabitants of the village are mostly decent people with modest ambitions and small problems. George Kowalsky has to sell his car because he was fired from the plastics factory; Chou-chou Porter can't decide whether to leave her husband; Cornell, the town idiot, opens a mailbox because he no longer trusts the mailman;
Mrs. Grover is shocked by her husband's sexual fantasies; Morris Lunberger, the sheriff, has nightmares about rotting corpses; and Miss Randolph has been waiting for forty years for the narrow gauge railway that will take her to the big city. Life in the village has turned in itself and drama is only on a small scale. The preparations for the annual fair and a fire on East Main Street are enough cause for great excitement. Geert van der Kolk sketches his village in sharp and often humorous detail. Little America reveals a limited and thoroughly human society.
The New City
Media response:
"Who can write like this creates great expectations."
NRC Handelsblad
The New City is a book full of unlikely heroes: Hendryk Przybylski in Warsaw, who tries to survive by renting out bedrooms in his apartment to traveling salesmen and tourists; Linda Koval, the Princeton typist, who cannot even get seven letters on paper without any errors, but is so overflowing with silly goodwill that she undermines the peace and order in her department and Mr. Phillips, who returns to Jamaica and in the old house
his mother has to live with three pushy strangers.
The short-cut, seemingly emotionless prose in this collection emanates a suggestion and sometimes a threat, reminiscent of Hemmingway's thesis that remains three-quarters unspoken in a good story.
The Boxer
Media response:
"Beautiful, evocative impressions"
Vrij Nederland
The men in The Boxer and Other Stories are on their own: Andrzej, the Polish nationalist who enters the monastery and cannot explain it to anyone; Sal Comiskey, the young freelancer who travels to El Salvador from Los Angeles because he wants to see a war; the Dutch journalist who returns to Warsaw after martial law has been declared and has to wind his way in the small, human chaos; and the boxer himself, standing alone in the ring, for his first fight in an attic in a black Washington neighborhood.
The men in The Boxer and other Stories and in the small, human chaos must wind his way; and the boxer himself, standing alone in the ring, for his first fight in an attic in a black Washington neighborhood. The men themselves have chosen for their lonely adventures and sometimes look at the consequences with compassionate self-mockery.
The Dancers
Media response:
"A beautiful sad story"
De Tijd
The dancers of this title novel are two voluntary exiles from the Netherlands, each of whom is alone in their own way. Maaike and the man who loves her in New York meet only five times. Their love is harsh and capricious, and while neither of them has many illusions, the outcome is no less painful and tragic.
The man in the novella The lake is literally alone. He goes into the wilderness, with an Indian canoe and two fishing rods. He has no company other than the water, the weather and the birds, the trout
that keep him alive, and the great moose with which he shares his peninsula.
In the story The Love of Martin Pols two other Dutch exiles live in a hotel in Barcelona, during the turbulent times shortly after the death of the dictator Franco. They play a dangerous game with each other's love, the ending of which they both already provide.
The Lure of the Sea
Media response:
"Very fascinating and very enjoyable, even for complete sailing illiterates."
Beatrijs Ritsema
Geert van der Kolk is not only a writer but also an avid sailor. In The Lure of the Sea he combines both professions and takes the reader on his sailing trips to faraway places. The book begins with the journey he made with his wife and children to the Bahamas; then, braving icebergs and severe weather, he sets course for Greenland. After adventurous trips to Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Cuba, he finally
ends up in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. There he builds a traditional wooden fishing bolt on the beach, which he uses with three Haitian friends sail the route many boat people take to Florida. The urge for the sea is a bundle in which the lure of the water is irresistible.
The Smuggler of the Exumas
Media response:
"The novel is a miracle of unity, compactness and effectiveness [...] written in the way Anton Chekhov imagined the ideal book."
de Volkskrant
An old sailing yacht enters the port of Bimini. There is only one man on board. He is on his way to the Exumas, a remote and sparsely populated archipelago between Florida and Haiti. In Bimini, he takes an eleven-year-old boy from the island to help him navigate the sandbanks and coral reefs.
The skipper of the sailboat does not want to say where exactly they are going. He is also silent about the purpose of his trip until he is shot and seriously injured on an island that is officially uninhabited. The Exuma smuggler takes place at sea, under clear blue, swept clean by the trade wind
skies and in a tropical archipelago that is a sanctuary for modern pirates and exiles from the western world. The archipelago is also a draw for Caribbean migrants who want to try whatever seeks to reach the promised land of Florida. The silence of the islands and the dizzying space of the open sea give the novel a unique atmosphere, but Geert van der Kolk primarily tells the story of a man who goes in search of a lost friend, who experiences an almost fatal setback. , is helped and deceived, and finally, in a storm, nature has to face it.
The Fools of Tenakee
Media response:
Was named one of the best books of 2007 by Trouw.
In a sober, penetrating style, Geert van der Kolk takes the reader in his stories to hunters in the forests of West Virginia, homeless vagrants in Miami Beach, professors in Manhattan and boxers in a black slum. For many of his characters, life is above all survival. They do this in an immense and free country with an overwhelming nature and unlimited space for dreamers, freebooters and weirdos. For example, in The long evening the boxers dream of the big breakthrough, until they get their noses at the hard facts
be printed. Katherin Magruder, from In the Town of Claiborne, lives day by day with desperate optimism, and Corwin, from Is There Anyone Here To Help Me?, Has a different guaranteed plan every week to help me recover.
The Fools of Tenakee is a collection of stories full of people looking for something to hold on to in a life that often goes in a different direction than they want.
The Laughing Dog
Media response:
"Van der Kolk, the son of WF Hermans, (...) has shaped his story in a beautiful, inescapable way."
NRC Handelsblad
While waiting for the ferry to a small island in the Gulf of Mexico, Dutch archaeologist Charles Ruppert meets an American who works for the UPI news service. The American turns out to have known well one of Charles's old college friends, Hugo Werkema, when he worked as a war correspondent in El Salvador. When Charles, in surprise, asks when Hugo was in El Salvador, the American smiles
compassionately and says, “In a way, he's still in El Salvador. He's been dead for over ten years. "
When the reporter tells how Hugo was killed come to Charles not only back the memories of their students time; the story penetrates the essence of his own life.
Two Secrets
Media response:
Geert van der Kolk has a characteristic clear and down-to-earth tone. (...) Geert van der Kolk is a good writer. '
De Gelderlander
A man, Erik, who is not lonelier and unhappy than most other people, but who is more bothered by it.
A woman, Connie, who is as charming as she is insecure and believes that talking too much is bad luck.
Another woman, Elles, who acts like she is self-awareness in person.
A city that sometimes seems oppressively small and sometimes as big as a universe. And a friend who tells Erik that love is not a feeling but an activity.
These are the ingredients of Two Secrets, a novel about the small, the largest and the ridiculous things people do when they are in love, a book in which there is at least as much sex as there is talk and in which no one gets the chance to be serious. Two Secrets is a serious comedy, an original Dutch novel and a tribute to love.
The Harvest is Past
Media response:
"Doomed love in a landscape by Ennio Morricone, a novel that sparks."
Beatrijs Ritsema, Vrij Nederland
From the moment that engineer Andries Jordaan arrives in Africa, everything is different than he had hoped. The development project where he will work turns out to be a mess, the local tribes are indifferent or suspicious, and the authorities thwart him as much as they can. Jordaan receives unexpected help from Pippa Roberts, an English doctor who wants to open a regional clinic.
They believe they can do something good together, but underestimate how endless African reality is.
Their motives appear to be equally complicated. The Harvest is Past is an exciting, colorful and shocking novel, with the common thread being a love affair that seems too good to be true.
Adrift
Media response:
"Van der Kolk is inspired by the American tradition of the short story. [...] A colorful wonder of storytelling."
NRC Handelsblad
"Other than usual; very different from usual. Anyone who can write in this way raises great expectations, 'wrote the reviewer of NRC Handelsblad when Geert van der Kolk made his debut with the collection of short stories The New City. From the beginning they stood out for their precise, concise style and because they largely take place in Eastern Europe and America. The best stories have been brought together in Adrift. Together they form the literary reflection of a restless and adventurous life.
"A chameleontic writer who effortlessly succeeds in giving his stories the own tone and color of the environment in which they play," says Vrij Nederland.
The White Heron
Media response:
''While reading The White Heron, it is difficult not to think of Joseph Conrad and the better parts of Apocalypse Now."
Het Parool
In 1907 a young lieutenant-in-sea with a small naval vessel leaves from the Moluccas to the south coast of Dutch New Guinea. The purpose of the expedition is to explore the acquired colony and establish good relations with the Papuans. Instead of a peaceful and fertile colony, they discover an endless, dark and swampy jungle inhabited by headhunters and cannibals. In a violent confrontation, the lieutenant is forced to flee into the mountains with the only company being the interpreter Rufus, who turns out to be a quirky crook. After a difficult journey they reach
a plateau where a Papua tribe lives that has never had contact with the outside world.
The White Heron is an exciting adventure novel and a penetrating portrait of two men who are not only physically tested to the limit, but also have to survive in a world where their background, culture and experience offer no guidance whatsoever.