The Twin
a novel
Gerbrand Bakker (Translated by David Colmer)
‘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
When Henk’s twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.
After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. ‘A double bed and a duvet’, advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?
The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.
Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.
This prize-winning, best-selling Dutch novel, with its powerful sense of place, brooding atmosphere, and strong characters, brings to mind writers such as Graham Swift, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy.
Reviews
‘Loneliness, combined with the beauty of the landscape, creates an atmosphere of inchoate yearning.’
The Guardian
‘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, The Independent
» All reviews for this title‘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
