![]() ![]() ![]() Out of the blue, she contacts Helmer to ask if he will take on her somewhat troubled son, also named Henk, as a farm-hand. Banished from the family, Riet hasn’t been heard from in twenty years. We find out that Helmer is the surviving twin of Henk, who died twenty years previously in an accident caused by his then fiance, Riet. Helmer, the narrator and son who lives on the farm with his now dying father, seems to have missed the progress of time, but not of his own choosing. The setting is a farm in Holland that seems to have escaped the progress of time. ![]() The prose is spare but so captivating, I had a hard time putting the book down and looked forward to curling up with it whenever I had the chance. I felt like I escaped into a different world while I read this book. I mean, I’ve blogged about whether one should judge a book by its cover, but there was something about the aesthetics of this book that compelled me to buy it. Then one day recently I visited a local school’s book fair and there it was. My library doesn’t carry it, and I never saw it in any book store, so it sort of fell off my radar. I read a couple of bloggers’ reviews and the book sounded a tad slow and dull, not something that would appeal to my members. The Twin won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for 2010. The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker first came to my attention as I sought recent prize-winning novels for my Literary Masters book groups to read. ![]()
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