There is something immensely appealing about small books. In an age when bigger is better, and publishers produce books of 400 pages with enormous font and large paragraph spacing there is something reassuring about novels well short of 200 pages. Yes, big things can be said in small packages. And so it is with this.
Originally published in Dutch, the language of the author, this is a powerful piece of fiction writing. Anton is a twelve year old boy, living with his parents and older brother in a town in occupied Holland during WWII. It is 1945, the Nazis are beginning to realise that the tide is turning against them and their retributions whenever a Nazi or collaborator is killed are particularly vicious and somewhat random. So it is in Anton's small town one night when a collaborator is shot by an unknown. The result of this violence is that Anton, in turn, finds the violence turned upon him and his family and he is left an orphan. His life unfolds over the course of the book in a series of episodes between 1945 and 1982 where he grows from boy to man,going through the various stages of a life. At each episode he is confronted in some way by the tragedy of 1945, which was never really explained to him then or since in any way that enabled him to process or make sense of what had happened. Over the course of his life, during these episodes, he gradually comes to understand what really happened that day, and also finds the peace that has eluded him for all of his life. The world as seen through a child's eyes is, as we know, totally different from the same view that an adult may see. And that is what this book is about - the slow peeling away and probing of the secrets and reasons that people do things in a small community, not only to protect themselves, but also to protect those around them. And the healing that occurs as a result to those most damaged.
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