Becoming Strangers [Paperback]

Louise Dean (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2004

Jan has been dying for six years, bringing his unhappy marriage with Annemieke to an end in middle age. Their sons have given them one last gift, a holiday in the Caribbean. Dorothy and George have also been given a holiday, by their granddaughter - their first and probably last trip overseas. In the rain of Bexhill-on-Sea, two weeks at a beach resort seems irresistible. Alone together, in perfect surroundings, they are unable to escape their troubles, until a few chance events - a disappearance, an assault and a man called Bill Moloney - allow them to make something out of the ashes of their love. This is a different love story - about how there's seldom a 'happily ever after', but sometimes a chance to redeem a life together half-lived.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What keeps an unhappily married couple together? In her impressive debut, long-listed for the 2004 Man Booker, Dean dissects two hollow unions against the sultry backdrop of a Caribbean resort. George and Dorothy Davis, an English couple married more than 50 years, are worn down by neglect and boredom; Jan and Annemieke de Groot, Belgians married 31 years, are pulled apart by Jan's terminal cancer, which exposes issues they've suppressed for years. Dean is at her best in interior moments, when characters ponder their lives with private, brutal candor. "This was how they had always been," Annemieke reflects on her marriage, "his illness had simply developed the difference between them as light develops photographic film." As for George and Dorothy, they seem awfully reminiscent of Edward Albee's spiteful George and Martha. "You couldn't tell him that there was any marriage that wasn't equal measures love and hate," George Davis reflects, who decides bitterly that his wife now "wasn't content to have the last word; she had to have it twice." On holiday, friendships form, affairs spark and revelations startle. Adept at sharp dialogue and brisk plotting, Dean is also attentive to character development, choosing authenticity over sentimentality in a book that is poignant, often funny and unexpectedly redemptive. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Long-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize and winner of the Betty Trask Award, Becoming Strangers is far more sophisticated than the typical first novel. Based on the lives of one set of Dean's grandparents, the novel delves into marriage, relationships, romantic love, and friendship. Dean skillfully develops these themes and the relationships among the four primary characters and all the secondary ones, showing how ordinary people bury and then unearth the realities that their lives have become. One critic thought that Dean drew her men more realistically than her women, but overall, "Dean peels back the skin of these marriages with an unflinching lack of sentimentality and an immense talent for close observation and evocative, often poetic detail" (Atlantic).

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743239997
• ISBN-13: 978-0743239998
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,616,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Memories Locked In Each Other, January 18, 2006

By 

Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming Strangers (Hardcover)

Louise Dean's first novel focuses on the stories of two couples who travel to a holiday resort in the Caribbean as a treat from their children. None of the four individuals particularly want to go on this holiday, but they feel obligated to because both couples realise that it might be the last one that they have together. Both couples are struggling to deal with illness. A middle-aged Belgian couple named Annemieke and Jan go on this holiday with the knowledge that Jan is suffering from a terminal cancer. The older English couple named George and Dorothy realise that Dorothy is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease. Despite the depressing idea of couples going on a final holiday while facing their own mortality may seem terribly depressing, Dean is able to suffuse the narrative with comic touches that gives it a great deal of humanity and makes it a rewarding, moving read.

This thirty-four year old writer has unusual insight into the complex way a long term marriage can develop a significance beyond the mere routines which come with the bonding of two people. In some ways the individual identity of each person becomes lost because the memories from each of their lives are inextricably linked to this other person. What the characters in this novel are struggling to decide is if they will lose their own sense of themselves if they leave their partner. George tries to meticulously record his past by writing a memoir and Annemieke attempts to completely rediscover a self worth in anonymous sexual encounters. Dean's writing is incredibly enjoyable to read in its richly detailed short chapters and startlingly emotional scenes. At the same time it is able to explore some very complex ideas about the nature of relationships and personality in original, meaningful ways. This is a unique and beautiful first novel.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Death was a binary affair, not cumulative.", January 2, 2006

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming Strangers (Hardcover)

Against a lush Caribbean landscape, two couples on vacation meet and act out the small dramas of their marriages in a careful study of relationships honed on habit and unhappiness. But in this tropical paradise, an elegant resort that caters to its guests' every whim, both couples will come to terms with the realities of their choices. Jan DeGroot is dying of cancer, although he has gamely fought its determined advance for the last six years: "The knife-and-forking of his body seemed to give a perverse impetus to his will to survive." This Northern European couple has been sent on their "last holiday" by their grown sons, Annemieke DeGroot long trapped in her own discontent, almost anxious to get on with the rest of her life, her beauty fading while she waits for Jan's demise. In contrast, George and Dorothy, an English couple, have been married nearly sixty years, their habits entrenched with the daily bickering over nonsense that has become familiar.

George makes friends with Jan, though Dorothy and Annemieke could hardly be less compatible. Yet the heightened awareness of distance brings a flavor of friendship, at least for the men, who surprisingly find a sympathetic ear as they exchange stories and disappointments, lingering over drinks. While Dorothy drifts along in her own musings, George's complaints turn to a more honest appraisal of their shared years: "You couldn't tell him that there was any marriage that wasn't equal measure love and hate." Even Dorothy enjoys occasional insights, although she'd rather be at home amid her things: "Being an old lady was not as hard as being an old man." With a supporting cast of other resort-goers, a South African with a penchant for honesty who has a short fling with Annemieke, a long-haired, tattooed tile-setter, "the Americans" who demand their needs be instantly attended and the resort director, Jan and George sort through memories and plans for the future, limited though it may be, while Annemieke thrashes about in an effort to avoid her own shortcomings.

The characters are drawn with deft precision, their flaws and eccentricities stark against the lush background of the Caribbean resort. Each couple suffers the detritus of years of marriage, the petty rivalries and jealousies, silences and resentments. The author writes with such clarity that each page bespeaks a glance into a mirror, these protagonists as familiar as the spouse who snores when sleeping or habitually remarks on the other's failures, days of meant-to-do-better, years finally passed. In a novel that is neither maudlin nor depressing, the author carefully manipulates the myriad contradictions of each marriage with a compassionate eye and a talent for incisive observation, balancing flaws, fictions and attributes in an incisive characters study. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Page Turning and Heart Breaking, January 29, 2012

By 

prisrob "pris," (New England USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Becoming Strangers (Kindle Edition)

We all look forward to vacations, the fun, the time to reconnect with our loved ones. We have great expectations and sometimes those expectations don't match up with the reality. In Louise Dean's new book she writes "holidays are an agreeable palliative for an ailment mankind barely knows how to complain about: the life we have made".

Jan and Annemieke are from Belgium and have been given a Caribbean 'last holiday' by their two sons. Jan has cancer and has been told that there is nothing more to be done. His wife, has come along to look for a really good time. This is a couple whose marriage has come apart. Annemieke is tired of waiting for Jan to die. While Jan wants to take a car an explore the island, Annemieke is is restless and spots a man that looks interesting. She initiates sex with a complete stranger, Bill Molloy, who by the end of the novel may be looked at as 'one of the good guys'.

At the same time, an elderly couple, George and Dorothy from England have been given the gift of a vacation by their family.
These two people turn out to be the kind of folks you would want to meet at any time. George is outgoing and friendly, his wife Dorothy, we find is in the beginning stages of dementia, probably due to Alzheimers. Jan and George strike up a grand friendshipo and Dorothy comes along for the ride.

There are several other people who bring their personalities to the novel, one a rich American couple who are the complete package of the hateful, rich, conspicuous Americans. Annemieke gravitates toward this group, and she finds that her aging body is not looked upon as kindly as the others. She is ignored at times and uses Jan's upcoming death as a means of sympathy. Annemieke looks for sex whereever she can find it, and it seems this has been her manner throughtout the marriage. Jan in the meantime reads, takes his morphine pills, and spends his time with George and Bil Molloy.

Louise Dean has given us a a book that is completely real. The rich characters are so fully formed. We come to know them and accept them. The writing is so superb that you are tempted to go back to the beginning to start again. I will most certainoy read her other novels. It is rare to find a writer, like Louise Dean, who grabs you with the first words from a new novel.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 01-29-12

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