Fetch Het Gouden Ei Originated By Tim Krabbé Shown In Document
on Het gouden ei
got buried alive Sterk geschreven novelle, met een wat teleurstellend einde hoewel je fantasie natuurlijk wel op hol slaat door de gaten in het verhaal.
Ideaal "luievakantiedagboekje", je leest het in een rotvaart uit, Rex and Saskia, a couple, are on a road trip in France, After stopping at a gas station, Saskia goes inside to get drinks while Rex fills the tank, Saskia is never seen again, She seems to have vanished into thin air, Eight years later, Rex now in a relationship with Lieneke still cant help but wonder what happened to Saskia, After relaunching a public campaign into her disappearance, Saskias kidnapper reaches out to Rex, He will reveal everything that happened to Saskia, . . as long as Rex goes through the exact same process,
“Obsession is the ultimate weapon, ” Tagline for thefilm remake,
THE VANISHING is a Dutch thriller, translated to English, It was adapted into a film in, and then remade in America in, The American remake is one of my favorite “classic” movies, It Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock as the young couple, and Jeff Bridges as the villain, Many fans of this novel prefer the original film as well, and were not happy with the ending of the American remake, This ending is dark, disturbing, and horrifying, Ive had nightmares about it on and off over the years, The remake adds a bit more to the climax, and even though its still disturbing and horrifying, it didnt work for most audiences, I guess Im in the minority, I found the original film quite cheesy until the ending,
As for the book, . . Ive had a copy of this for years, and am glad I finally got around to it, The beginning and ending are gripping, but there are some sections in the middle that couldve been taken out, I didnt need to readpages about a badminton game, The translation is a bit clunky as well, Im still glad to have finally read the book that inspired the films,
My personal opinion: Skip this book and skip thefilm, Watch thefilm remake, and then google the ending of this book or theversion to see the differences, I just watched the movie and it was almost exactly what I pictured while I read it! This is a good book to read if you tend to be the gullible type.
A nasty little reality check about blindly trusting a stranger in need, and following that, a suspenseful story about a compelled and determined lover, waarom stelt niemand zich de vraag waarom een man met mitella achter het stuur zit lol According to sitelinkwww, Ethnologue. com, Dutch is one of languages that I can not read, . . Ouch! Now, I've mostly learned to cope with my multilingual illiteracy, but every so often it returns to haunt me.
Case in point, . .
I'm sure the original version of Tim Krabbe's cult novel is wonderful, Unfortunately, as a stupid American, I was forced to read the English conversion, which I found stilted and unnatural, and made for a distracting read.
The first day there could be nothing, but Rex still went to look, On foot and without an umbrella, even though it was raining softly,Passages like the above, which for me lacked flow, were one of the chief culprits responsible for my viewing this as a fairly tepid “like.
”
The other was some WTF, "hold the phone" reactions to the choices/thoughts/feeling of the main character, which I found incredible not the good kind.
Both of these issues conspired to periodically rip me away from the narrative, leaving me all too aware that I was reading,
Still, despite its flaws, the middle third of this very short novel/novella, during which we experience the POV of the psycho du jour, was exceptionally well done.
Disturbing doesnt begin to cover it, but more on that below,
PLOT SUMMARY:
While on holiday, a young man and his girlfriend stop at a convenience store and the girlfriend “vanishes.
” No trace, no clues, no answers, Eight years later, Rex Hofman has become obsessed with what happened to Saskia on that fateful day, Hes doesnt really care whether shes alive or not, he just needsto know what happened, By the way, you can pencil this in as one of the those “not quite passing the smell test” character depictions, because Rexs obsession, without the concomitant sense of loss, just doesnt hold water.
After establishing Rexs preternatural curiosity, the POV switches to that of Raymond Lemorne, the man who abducted Saskia, Here we learn who he is, and why and how he did it, all of which is unsettling because of the blending of the unassuming, everyday normality of the mans existence with his diabolical machinations.
This is the gold of the story that really makes this worth reading,
The story then converges towards the final expression of the exploration of dark obsession, Unfortunately, the climax involves the most inexplicable character choice since Laura Dern agreed to be Rocky Denniss squeeze in the movie Mask, I cried bullshit and the narrative lost all vestiges of believability at that point, I was left shaking my head in “you can't be serious” disappointment,
THOUGHTS:
As far as I know, the translation I read i, e. , the Sam Garrett version is the most popular and I don't believe there is one that is considered superior, In other words, I think this is as good as it gets unless you can read it in the original Dutch, While most of the time it was fine, there were enough jarring, clanky moments to bother me,
The local color changes to red everytime we get there, Rex had thought, but to his own surprise he handt said it, But it was hot and far, and during the last hour the mood had become a little testy,Theres nothing really wrong with the above, but my eyes didnt slide across the page, . . they kept hitting speed bumps and something felt a bit off, This may just be me, so if you see nothing troubling about either of the two quotes Ive included so far, you may have less of an issue than me.
This brings me to my other gripe, . . main character Rex. He's supposed to be the emotional/psychological anchor of this story, and yet his thoughts and actions left me feeling no sympathy for him whatsoever.
I never connected with him even in the most tangential of manners, He just left me either scratching me head or wanting to throw him through a wall,
Example: His girlfriend has been missing for an hour, An hour. This is the girlfriend he will obsess over for the nextyears, After acknowledging to himself that she is probably being raped, and thinking it is likely, after all the raping and other violence is done, that she will be dropped off on the side of the road, he ponders, and I quote: “All things considered, that was the likeliest.
It didnt even have to mean the end of their vacation, ”
Now if you are like me, you will want to do a full stop and immediately reread that last sentence, Girlfriend you love being raped by kidnapper and your thoughts go to salvaging the holiday, Hmm
I wanted to quit the book right there and count tountil the angry voices in my head stopped screaming obscenities about the ridiculousness of that thought.
I reluctantly continued with the book, and Im glad I did because the saving grace of the story is Raymond Lamorne, Ray is a psycho unlike any Ive ever encountered, Hes a highly intelligent professor and family man who lives a completely normal life, No raving, no chronic masturbation, nothing indicating he finger paints with his poo or speaks to his dead momma,
He is just an empty shell, completely detached from humanity, A man devoid of empathy who gets an “idea” in his head, a question, and becomes “obsessed” with knowing if he can do it,
Now, I could get all poindexter at this point and talk about the deeper meaning of the piece, The vagaries of fate, the destructive nature of obsession, the transmutation of grief into “the need to know, ” The problem is, except for the skincrawling creepiness of Raymond, I didnt feel it, Rex was an inadequate vessel,
So, the writing and the main character left less than liking it, but the brilliant Raymond section saved this, making it, though barely, intostar territory.
Still, read it for that middle section, shiver
.stars. Recommended. CLAUSTROFOBIA
Saskia sonhou que estava fechada dentro de um Ovo Dourado que voava pelo universo onde tudo era negro ficaria ali para sempre porque não podia morrer.
A sua única esperança era que houvesse um outro ovo a voar pelo espaço e que ao chocarem se destruíssem e tudo terminasse.
Rex amavaa tanto que, mesmo oito anos depois de ela desaparecer, não hesitou em entrar num Ovo Dourado na esperança de a encontrar.
Lemorne gostava de experiências extremas sempre que tinha alguma ideia tornavaa possível, por maiores dificuldades que se lhe deparassem, This is one of those books I chased for years, trying to find a copy of it, It's actually a novella. Slim and compact. It's a tale of obsession as told by two men, Many readers will be put off by the "unlikeable" protagonists both of the men here are definitely not super nice, although one of them is a sociopath and the other is not but noir is built on characters that make you squirm.
The premise, as you might guess by the title, is the mysterious vanishing of a young woman during a vacation, Her boyfriend is haunted by her disappearance and eventually we get to discover what happened to her, Obviously, the 'what happened!' is the part that keeps you turning the pages and keeps the boyfriend in thrall, but ultimately the answer is not as important as the psychological portrait it paints of both a monster and a man the man has more in common with the monsters than he thinks.
It all has a very European noirlit vibe, by which I mean it's a bit slow and quiet and not meant for people who love explosions or nice people.
Those are both in short supply, Scary story, the dutch film version is even better, But you Will need a strong moral, it is terrifying,
The Vanishing is a small book, but do not let that fool you, It is intensely creepy from a psychological standpoint, and you literally will not be able to put it down before you've read it cover to cover.
I won't go into plot, but my take on this novel is this: if you consider that the Dutch title is the Golden Egg Het gouden ei, you will understand this novel much easier.
The Golden Egg refers to a nightmare that Saskia girlfriend of Rex, the main character in this novel had as a child, In this dream, there was only one way out for Saskia and if you take it from that perspective, things become much clearer regarding Rex's motivations at the end.
The Vanishing is a frightening novel it explores one man's obsessions and shows how obsessions can often bring people to teeter over the brink of sanity and bring them from fantasy to action.
You never know who's watching, . . and that was enough to creep me out totally, The writing is chillingly excellent and will leave you thinking about what you've just read for a long time,
If you like warm fuzzies at the end of your stories, don't pick this one up, However, if you're looking for something that will make you think, this small book will do it, I HIGHLY recommend it. A great little scary story, The Dutch movie haunted me for years, so I had to read the book finally, Even though the book doesn't have many pages, the story was written well and the characters are built great, A great read for an evening, Ich hätte nicht gedacht, dass so viel in diesem kurzen Buch steckt, das mit dem Verschwinden einer jungen Frau, Saskia, beginnt, das ihr Freund Rex auch Jahre später immer noch beschäftigt.
Schon die Widersprüchlichkeit von Rex Gefühlen zu seiner Freundin, die er liebte, fand ich so faszinierend wie später .
Auch der titelgebende Traum vom goldenen Ei wird mir in Erinnerung bleiben beziehungsweise das darin geschilderte Gefühl, hatte ich doch ebenfalls einen Kindheitstraum, der mich ähnlich geängstigt hatte.
Okay I definitely need to read something upbeat after this one goes to bookshelf retrieves a sitelinkDavid Sedaris book or something worthy of a Literature student that unfortunately hasnt read enough good literature and thus shouldnt be wasting valuable time on suspect reads such as this one plucks down an unread sitelinkErnest Hemingway.
Im glad I didnt pay more than a dollar in the local opshop for this one, but even so, I still feel like I was fleeced.
At least with novels like sitelinkThe Lovely Bones and McEwan's sitelinkThe Comfort of Strangers you have some broody literary technique to fall back on amidst the rape, murder, or twisted seduction.
Your stomach might lurch but you can at least appreciate the skill while youre screwing up your nose in disgust,
It started out so promising: a cult novel, a novel of dark obsession, Oh that sounds like the ticket, I thought, affecting an English voice from sitelinkBrideshead Revisited, I so badly wanted this book to contain something more profound than your average psychopath yikes, are there so many that they've now become average After reading Jon Ronsons,sitelinkThe Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, my radar for creepy, coldhearted weirdos has been seriously ramped up.
Interjection number one:
In retrospect, Ronsons book was a startlingly bad choice of reading material for an International flight to London, especially given that I was on my way to nurse my fragile mother in the ICU and therefore about to reexperience the usual mayhem which accompanies most encounters with the British medical system.
I spent Sydney to Singapore psychopath spotting, and then some, and even in my halfbleary, sleep deprived state, I was convinced that the weedy manager tearing strips off the Eastern European cook in a Heathrow hotel, was a winning candidate for the nasty P word.
For Gods sake, all the guy did was over cook the bacon, Lay off already.
Interjection number two:
I feel mean writing such a scathing review, My apologies to the author for my ungenerous words, but what can I say, we can't like everything,
Back to my unhappy review, . .
If ever there was a time for reading ahead on the reviews for a book this was it, But I was enticed by comments from respectable US and British papers, which oozed things like: A masterly work, concise, stylistically bold and full of surprises.
I have to say the only thing that I agree with in that sentence is the word concise, Atpages, its a couple hours read and I thought, cult, carefully constructed narrative oh go on then, lets give it a shot,
However, the reviewers are obviously seeing something in this book that Im way missing this isnt the first time, This has a tendency to make me momentarily doubt myself, Am I missing some kind of dormant brilliance Even so, Graham Greeneesque travelogue A tale of Mephistophelian friendship Sorry but no, not in my neck of the literate woods.
Besides, hasnt this murder mystery
storyline been done to death In fact, is there really so much as even a drop of originality left in this sort of stuff Well perhaps with erudite prose, and believable characters, yes, neither of which is to be found here.
I mean how many ways can you throw a unique spin on evil, and why do we want further exposure to more of that sickness anyway This is the standard fare of just about every police drama you can name.
Absolutely nothing new here for me at least, Im obviously not destined for a followup career in criminology,
As for Rex, the main protagonist, he is the most cardboard, transparently written character Ive run into in a long time, But more than this, he commits easily the most unbelievable character choice Ive witnessed outside of a high school creative writing class, I think another reviewer echoed my exact refrain at that enthusiastically promoted surprise moment, which went something along the lines of you cannot be expletive serious.
Really, this particular character is just not credible, He is nothing but words, The writer did not help me believe for even one minute that he would make the choice in the latter part of the book that he did, obsessed or not.
I read on purely to notch off another text on thereading challenge, Shallow, but there it is, I promise myself to get more discerning from here on in,
Before I finish, I have to wonder aloud thus committing to record what the hell was the bit in the middle of the book about the tennis match, complete with elaborate but predictable still wooden descriptions of the players I had to read back a little before surmising that this had zero to do with advancing the plot in any way barring a stab at smouldering obsession, and failing, but at least it allowed the writer to convey his knowledge of the tennis scoring system.
Having written this, I did a quick scroll through the GR reviews and clocked the manys, a lot ofs and a fews.
Im with those rating at the lower end of the scale, This book did nothing for me, apart from reinforce that I need to be more careful with my book choices,
And avoid overzealous, powercrazy restaurant managers,
Sigh.
.
Tim Krabbé