Amsterdam Book Life

I read three books while traveling to Amsterdam - on the plane and in my drab and industrial hotel room. While I was traveling by myself and the hotel room lacked charm, I loved Amsterdam and enjoyed immensely the exuberant loveliness of the city with its canals, fantastically intricate and playful architecture, and cafes.

Being hard-pressed to find books I want to read these days, I'm excited that I found all of these three books all to be memorable and evocative.

First, I had ordered The Assault by Harry Mulisch from Amazon before I left, because it was an important Dutch novel. Apparently, this novel is a classic in the Netherlands, and I can see why. Set during the World War II era, the story is told through the lens of a growing boy who lost his parents, brother, and home because of the murder of a Dutch Nazi outside the door of his home in Haarlem. The boy is raised by his aunt and uncle and tries to tamper down the horrific memories of that time in his life, moving in and out of awareness, rendering well how many individuals deal with trauma as they age. I won't say more and be a spoiler, but there are many issues that come to the surface as he seeks to discover the truth about his parents' deaths and the degree of guilt or innocence that the various individuals involved possessed.

I also read An Equal Music by Vikram Sheth, which I chose because I had enjoyed Sheth's A Suitable Boy and found this one at a English used bookstore teeming with intriguing reads run by a delightful expat former football player from the states. This book is a smaller and quieter read than A Suitable Boy [which I highly recommend]. It's about an English musician who plays the violin in string quartets and suffers from a temperament which is not quite up to the demands of the job or ordinary love and life. Although a bit precious and overly romantic at times, it kept me busy reading throughout the entire flight back to the states and made me want to check out when the next string quartet will be coming to my university town of East Lansing. It should be a great read for musicians and those for whom music is a major influence in their lives.

Finally, while recuperating from jet lag, I read the short and moving novel, An Artist of the Floating World, which is by the renowned Kazuo Ishiguro, who is well known for The Remains of the Day and the more recent Never Let Me Go. I also chanced upon this first of Ishiguro's novel at my new favorite used book store in Amsterdam. Ishiguro has never disappointed me, and this particular narrative had a delightful symmetry that left me feeling very satisfied at the ending. The story is set in post-war Japan and tells the story of an aging artist who is at times living in the past--when he was an influential artist within Imperialist Japan--and the present, where what he perceives to have been his glorious past is denigrated by the young Japanese, including his own daughters, who find it necessary to turn upon that which had turned much of their country into rubble. The ending brings the man full circle, but, again, I won't be a spoiler. Let me just say that you could easily spend a few hours with this book, a cup of tea, and a hot bath, and you won't be disappointed.