Just finished The Twin, literally minutes ago, and want to get my thoughts down as quickly as possible. Not because I’m so very excited. It’s just that I know I have a problem doing a proper review after a few days have passed, and the truth is I don’t even know what I think of this book right now. Maybe I should let it marinate, but just in case, here goes.
The original title in Dutch is Boven Is Het Stil, which translates roughly to “Above Is Quiet.” I would have liked to have known that, as the novel begins with the main character, Helmer, swapping rooms with his dying father, moving the old man into a room upstairs in the house they share. And then there’s the metaphor for heaven that “Above” suggests… not the heaven of paradise, but the heaven of where dead people go. Helmer is a man who, now in his fifties, is largely defined by the dead—his mother, his twin brother, his soon to be dead father. Not to mention a surfeit of dead animals throughout, which has only now occurred to me, upon reflection. If Helmer is defined by these deaths, and the dead are quiet, then Helmer is quiet too.
Quiet in the sense of silent, and Bakker repeatedly mentions sounds: a buzzing electric clock, a small radio playing jazz… but I don’t recall his making much of barnyard animals sounds, the sheep and chickens and cows. Helmer has no voice, can’t express his desires, doesn’t even know what his desires may be. His best hoping at finding desire at all is in putting a map on the wall of his bedroom.
And quiet in the sense of still, in that Helmer is unmoving, frozen by the deaths of those around him. At the moment when he would have become his own person, going off into the world to make himself into whatever he could, his brother dies, forcing him to return to the farm and take up the role his brother would have taken. Not exactly a square peg in a round hole, but nevertheless not the life he might have led, and certainly not the son his father would have chosen.
But this is not a maudlin story, a tale of tragedy and bitterness and regret. It’s sad, yes, the kind of sad you accept because that’s the way of life. Bakker, in Colmer’s translation, is gentle, simple, contemplative, without being barren or terse or merely laconic. Dutch winters are cold without being harsh, and spring is just another season, without being lush or refreshing. Sheep give birth to lambs, and some of them are stillborn—that’s the way of things.
This is a book that is rich with symbols and images, and plenty of opportunity for any given reader to bring as much as he or she wants to a reading. What do you make of the two donkeys, the television set, the binoculars, the broken bicycle, the windmill… I could go on. I mean this as only high praise, that this is a book that will be read and taught and examined and cherished.
Or, take it as it stands—a simple story about a sad man.