Gerbrand Bakker: The Detour

[leyla]

As usual, all my formatting was lost when I copied and pasted this review in - the three lines of spacing between different paragraphs were erased, and replaced with mysterious asterisks...
Sorry about the places where consecutive words are joined up.


The Detour - Gerbrand Bakker.
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer
Harvill Secker £12.99
Reviewed by Leyla Sanai

Gerbrand Bakker’s debut, The Twin, won the International IMPAC Dublin Award and gathered critical acclaim in the media and from the distinguished likes of J.M. Coetzee. The Detour, his follow-up, is similarly restrained in tone, but the surface tranquility masks an undercurrent of unease, the sense of impending doom gliding under the calm surface like a crocodile.

Emilie is a married Dutch lecturer in Translation Studies, doing a PhD on the American poet Emily Dickinson. She had an affair with one of her students but the fling soured: ‘[She] thought about him sitting in front of her later, amongst the other students, one of many, with the face of a sulking child. A spiteful egotistical child, and as ruthless as children can be.’

Emilie fled from Holland to Wales, and the novel opens with her in a rented rural farmhouse, her whereabouts unknown to her husband or family. Remembering an uncle she loved, who made a half-hearted suicide attempt and then tried to escape his demons by immersing himself in activity, Emilie similarly tries to ward off despair by keeping busy, industriously tending the land. But it is soon apparent to the reader that the affair was not her only reason for running away. Something is happening to her body, and Emilie is perhaps unwilling to become a victim in a similar way to the way she unsympathetically perceives Dickinson, who, despite her isolation, Emilie believes wrote clingy letters signed with self derogatory nicknames, and induced guilty irritation in at least one correspondent. Emilie’s solitude is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger who ends up staying.

The chapters are very short, the writing is concise and precise, and the underlying tension makes for addictive reading. The use of the impersonal third person -he, she – with few names, adds to the brooding atmosphere. Bakker’s experience working on nature films (as a subtitler), and as a gardener, imbue the descriptions of the natural world with a glorious authenticity.

Intriguing parallels are suggested. Trying to recapture her sensual memories, Emilie lies naked on a rock. A badger catches the scent of her groin and is attracted to her. She repels it and is bitten. On four separate occasions when Emilie tells people about the bite, they declare it’s impossible because ‘badgers are shy creatures.’ Bakker maybe using the badger as an allegory for the supposedly innocent student, attracted by Emilie’s sexual availability, turning nasty on rejection, and deemed blameless by observers.

Another allegorical reference is to the unknown predator which is slowly killing the geese on Emilie’s land, and which mirrors the insidious march of the cancer devouring Emilie’s body. Yet Bakker stays on the right side of the dividing line between the dark and the bleak. The wonderful translation allows his subtle humour full rein: while Emilie chases the geese to try and herd them into their protective shelter, ‘the sheep in the adjoining field remained unmoved, most of them grazed on calmly.’ On TV, the shallow values of Pop Idol and its ilk are pilloried when a girl with ‘a magnificent, clear voice’ is dismissed because she’s fat, while on a property programme, ‘an agitated couple walked around the screen with the woman shouting ‘I’d rather die than give up my cats’, and ‘a spoilt bitch’ exclaims ‘this ticks all the boxes!’

The peripheral characters, too, are sources of amusement – the gently probing shop staff, who Emilie stonewalls, the chain-smoking GP with an odd idea of patient confidentiality, and, best of all, a grotesque farmer who is intrusive, boorish, gluttonous and lecherous and induced a frisson of delighted repulsion in this reader. The only possible negative I could eke out was that, as a woman, I wondered whether Emilie’s frequent and needless shedding of clothes, even in cold rooms, was a come-on to potential film rights buyers -Bakker’s debut is already being adapted for the big screen. But this trivial and sceptical question dissolves into insignificance, such is the allure of this disquieting and unobtrusively compelling novel.

[Daniel del Real]

Is that so hard for you to add the correspondent flag when you start a thread?

[leyla]

Yes. If you want the flag, Daniel, you're welcome to add it.

[leyla]

Daniel, sorry if I sounded abrupt. I've explained before that my flag recognition is poor - we never studied it in school as far as I can remember, and I have never been interested enough to learn them since. I would be happy to put the flag up if someone labelled the flags with the country of origin. Or, I could add the nationality of the author to the top of my review if that would help.

[Liam]

I put in the flag and fixed as much of the joint-word-formatting as I could, but in L's defence, let me just say that several other posters had computers that refused to upload Stewart's flag menu (Harry was one of them), so they posted everything without assigning any type of flag or icon to their posts. (Moderators should fix these things, and not be lazy).

[Daniel del Real]

I mean, it's not entirely necessary to add the flag, I just think it is a good idea to have a broader initial context at the time of visualizing the thread. There is no problem Leyla, and I also apologize if my comment was rude, I didn't mean to. For future times you can add the country to the thread and Liam or I can find the appropiate flag, no problem at all.

[leyla]

Thanks Liam, thanks Daniel.

[Eric]

I'm just wondering: translation studies and Emily Dickinson. Isn't there a danger of a surfeit of literature in the novel?

[Liam]

Who cares, if the novel happens to work as a novel? I wouldn't know, of course, because I haven't read it, but you're one of the lucky few around here, Eric, in having the ability to read it in the original, . Bakker is one of those new authors I haven't ever heard of before (prior to their winning a big literary prize), so this is indeed interesting.

[leyla]

I don't think there's too much literature in the novel, Eric. Bakker wears his research lightly, there are no in-depth analyses of Dickinson's work, just enough to keep the reader interested.

[Eric]

I'd like to have a look, and as Liam suggests, I can read it in the original. All I could find on the net in Dutch was a brief sampler. I was simply wondering about the protagonist called Emilie and how that fits in with Emily Dickinson. Leyla does suggest that things, e.g. that the allusions to Dickinson, are digested rather than tacked on. It is always a good sign if leitmotifs become intrinsic. My only quibble is really: are Brits so narcissistic that they can only take note of a book from the Netherlands - which has its own specialities - if it is about Caernarfon, Bangor and Anglesey? Bakker appears to be a Frisian. However, Cossee is a good publishing house, having, for instance, the novels of Ariëlla Kornmehl and others. So now that at least one Cossee book has arrived in the UK, I hope others will follow. Judging by the opening sections in Dutch, he writes short, comprehensible sentences. But I won't be able to judge the progress of the plot till I read the whole book.

[Liam]

So, the book is finally coming to America. Note that the publishers (or perhaps the translator?) have changed the original title:

[peter_d]

So, the book is finally coming to America. Note that the publishers (or perhaps the translator?) have changed the original title:

I wrote a short review about this book right after it was pusblished. I was positive back then, so I must have liked it. Today I can hardly recall what the whole book was about. Here's a google-translate translation of what I wrote about it (sorry for not having time to edit the poor English):


Lots of loving descriptions of nature, a generous portion of loneliness, quietness of the countryside, a short procession of eccentrics and some painful memories of the past and it can not be otherwise than that we are talking about a novel by Gerbrand Bakker. With Detour Gerbrand Bakker returns to a previously proven strategy.

Expectations were not high, at least not to me. After the overwhelming international success of The Twin, the novel June was a disappointment. It was pretty much the same and the story flowed forth too slow and here and there somewhat unnatural. I had the feeling that we had to do with a one-trick-pony, but with The Detour Gerbrand Bakker has proven otherwise.

Most fascinating about the story of the Dutch woman who fled to the countryside of Wales, is the way the questions that rise with the reader in the beginning, are all answered exactly at the right moment. It becomes clearer and clearer what had been enacted before the beginning of the story and why the woman has left home and hearth. The Detour is like The Twin a book in which nothing much happens, but actually quite a lot.

[leyla]

Liam, I prefer Ten White Geese as a title. We never do find out exactly why the geese are disappearing, but whatever predator it is, the metaphor for gradual, inexorable loss is powerful.
Peter d, I like your thoughts in the review. I can also understand what you say about the book in retrospect: I found it so powerful immediately after reading it. The story is still with me, but since it isn't one packed with events, I must have been bowled over by the writing rather than the plot or characters.

[peter_d]

Liam, I prefer Ten White Geese as a title. We never do find out exactly why the geese are disappearing, but whatever predator it is, the metaphor for gradual, inexorable loss is powerful.
Peter d, I like your thoughts in the review. I can also understand what you say about the book in retrospect: I found it so powerful immediately after reading it. The story is still with me, but since it isn't one packed with events, I must have been bowled over by the writing rather than the plot or characters.

A different title in translation is very often not a good idea. The best example being Houellebecq's Extention du domaine de la lutte that was changed into the horrible 'Whatever'. But I agree with Leyla that The Detour is an exception. Very well chosen!

[leyla]

I know what you mean, peter_d. So many books and films have their titles changed needlessly. The film Ae Fond Kiss had a completely different title when we saw it in France. I like the cover photo Liam posted up, too. Liam, you have a great eye for good covers.

[Liam]

Liam, you have a great eye for good covers.

*brushes an imaginary dust-mote off his shoulder*

Thank you, dear. I does what I can, .

[John]

Bakker is Dutch. He should stick to baking and not writing.

[peter_d]

The Dutch write mostly about cheese or tulips. Dutch writers are very cheesy!
Heere Heeresma is a small exception (he also writes about porn).
Flemish people write in Dutch. The difference is like British English and American English.
I recommend Danish writers like Karen Blixen or Hans Christian Andersen if you don't want to be dumbed down too much.

Bakker is Dutch. He should stick to baking and not writing.

Where is Eric when you need him...

[Hamlet]

Bakker is Dutch. He should stick to baking and not writing.

There's a famous mail order company by the name of BAKKER in Holland, they sells plants seeds...