Customer Reviews

The Deadwood Beetle

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This wise and gorgeously wrought novel had me by the heart from its first sentence. Tristan Martens, a retired entomologist in his seventies, has discovered by accident the blackened pine sewing table once owned by his mother in the Nazi occupied Netherlands. As he recognizes it in the New York antique shop - "this ghost, this small, lost thing, floating like a piece of impossible wreckage toward me" - he knows he must possess it to keep its secret from the world. The owner Cora Lowenstein, who has misinterpreted the childlike scrawl on the table's underside, stands in his way. The table is not for sale. And so Tristan begins to scheme in his careful but ultimately clumsy way to persuade her otherwise.

Dressler is a skilled novelist with a flair for language and storytelling. The voice of Tristan is so authentic and honest that I can't imagine any reader emerging from this tale without a deep affection for him. As he struggles with guilt, his grown and unyielding son, the stirrings of love, and his mortality, we come to understand that a seemingly simple life is not necessarily so. His last graduate student Elida periodically bursts into his apartment, urging him to leave his boxes of dead beetles to get out more, but we already know Tristan has done and seen more than she has (though Elida, too, has her demons.)

THE DEADWOOD BEETLE is one of those books that lingers in the imagination long after its reading. You won't regret a minute spent with this author and her extraordinary novel.

The Deadwood Beetle is a beautifully written work. There are so many things to love about it, but I was truly impressed with the pacing of the story. The opening story is linear, but Dressler interweaves stories from the past that aren't told chronologically. A less-skilled writer would either not attempt this at all or bungle it badly. Dressler does neither. The stories float, intermingled, above the linear tale but there is no confusion. It works and works wonderfully. I have read The Deadwood Beetle, listened to it on tape with my Books-On-Tape bookclub, and bought it in large print for my father. An unequivocal recommendation!

"The Deadwood Beetle" by Mylene Dressler, G. K. Hall & Co., 2001, Large Type Book.

At first, this book appears to be about a little Dutch boy who survived the Holocaust, and, years later spies his mother's sewing table in an antiques store. The store owner, Cora Lowenstein, translates the child's inscription, on the bottom of the table, without knowing that it was Tristan Martens, himself, who carved it there years ago. Her version in English is "When the Jews are gone, we will be the next ones", which she interprets as in the same fashion as the famous quote from Pastor Niemoeller, (1892-1984).

It seems, however, that was not the meaning of the carved words: Tristan Martens (who now had to be in his late sixties or early seventies) knew it was from his Dutch father, who was a Nazi. Tristan was not a victim of the holocaust; instead, his family was waiting for their turn in power, after the Jews were gone. Angry Dutch citizens had looted his mother's table from their Dutch home when The Netherlands was liberated. He feels guilty for most of his life. This central theme of guilt is always a background plot as Tristan begins to see Cora Lowenstein in a romantic light. The guilt theme is intertwined, somewhat, with entomology, as he deals with his last graduate student, who, in turn, is dealing with a unique form of insect out in Arizona. Tristan Martens tells the student's parents how he happened to be an immigrant (as they were) and some of the story of his life directly after the World War.

Except for flashbacks to his life in The Netherlands, the book is set mainly in winter-time New York City, with some trips to a nursing home in nearby Connecticut. I think that the author, Dressler, has done a good job in capturing the flavor of subways and travel in New York. She has written an intriguing book.

I am not a reader of mainstream novels, but from the moment I opened this book, I could not put it down. Dressler grabs your heart and mind and weaves her delicate but tense story in such a manner that you will find it difficult to find a place to stop without reading it straight through. Readers of Nicholas Sparks will positively love this story. Poor old Tristan Martens, a retired entomologist [and the metaphors about the beetles are just stunning] discovers in an antique shop in New York his mother's sewing table, but an even more startling discovery for him is the owner of the shop, the elegant beautiful Cora who immediately steals his heart. But how to buy the table, which she tells him is not for sale! So he is torn between being honest and trying to devise a method of buying the table so she will think he is doing her a favor. At the same time, he does not want to say or do anything dishonest, that might destroy his chance at the distant hope of Cora's love.
Buy this book immediately! Every moment you delay, you are cheating yourself of a fantastic experience!

This is a simple story portraying very complex emotions. I wouldn't describe this as a story that I "couldn't put down" but rather one that I would "go back to" because it is one that stays in your heart. The writing style is truly fine-tuned and the flashbacks into the past are so well done.

The explanation of the line carved in the bottom of the sewing desk "When the Jews are gone, we will be the next ones", is so well done. Things are never as they seem.

This is a wonderful example of how each of us cannot escape our history, but we have choices: we either have to let it overcome us or come to terms with it.

This tender but sad story touches on the loneliness of an elderly man, guilt over his family's past, his lost relationship with his son and former wife, and the expectations he puts on a friendship based on a relic from his past. More than anything it expresses just how fleeting relationships are in this life and how important it is to have something onto which to hold in times of uncertainty.

Told beautifully through Tristan's relationships with two young women (one a former student) in his present life and flashbacks to his life as a child in Nazi Europe (the Netherlands and Germany), this story is presented in such as way as to expose the vulnerability of one elderly man and leave the reader feeling just a bit sadder for having read this touching novel.

I enjoyed this book for the historic content but found a few of the characters less than believable and thought the book just needed "something." I just wanted more from it somehow. The characters that were well-done were enjoyable, however, and I did like the descriptions and the language.

This book was recommended to me by a friend -- an author and bookseller -- and I feel it is one of the best gifts he's ever given me.

Told with grace, wit and intelligence, the plot of the book -- the skeleton on which the events are hung -- is not as important as the way in which the author tells it. There is a grandeur, a measured unfolding which wraps you in the characters' lives. There is real sympathy for the different human viewpoints which come from our varied experiences, and the reader is gradually allowed to share in the breadth of the characters.

It's a lovely, loving and very artfully told journey.

The Deadwood Beetle is a warm, well-written book. I enjoyed the uncomplicated way in which the story was written. The book is worth reading by anyone who likes books free of flowery fillers.

deadwood beetle: a well written book. i really enjoyed reading the story. even though i know the ending would be realistic, i still guess i have a preconceived idea about how the story should have ended, meaning the story ended differently than i expected, which is a good thing. read the book, its worth it.