Customer Reviews

A Heart of Stone

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book on a whim, and was absolutely gripped by it. Could NOT put it down. Had to miss a whole day at work. And it was absolutely worth it.

The gripping tragedy Ellen struggles with is never forced upon the reader, it is never obvious, and best of all, there is not a trace of sappyness in this book.

Even though the story is certainly not ordinary, I was suprised by how closely I could se elements of myself and my family in this book. The author made me care for all the characters, and I was able to identify with Ellen, the narrator.

Just a beautiful book. So well written. I cannot remember the last time I have read such a seamless book. Renate Dorrestein slips so effortlessly between the past and the present, in such an intimate way, that I felt she was sitting right next to me, relating her extraordinary tale. And I did not want her to stop, even not when it was time to go to work.

Do yourself a favor. Shell out the money and buy the book. You will not regret it.

A HEART OF STONE - By Renate Dorrestein

Of all the novels I've read this year, this one I feel the most strongly about. As I read the book, I pictured it in my mind, as if I was watching a black and white film. The story is told in flashbacks, going from one time period to another. The flashes are brief. We'll get a scene here, another scene there. And through this technique, we slowly learn the story of Ellen Van Bemmel, and her memories of a family that appeared happy to the rest of the world, but in reality was full of turmoil and unhappiness.

Ellen had many happy memories of her father, sitting on his lap and laying her head on his chest, feeling safe. No one could hurt her when she was with Daddy. He had promised her. And she loved her mother. Her parents seemed so in love, at least from what she remembered. Her beautiful sister Billie (Sybille), her brothers Kester and little Carlos (Ellen's name for her brother) - they shared happy times, all those years ago. But a tragedy happens on her 12th birthday - it was such a horrible day, that Ellen has blocked most of it from her memory. It takes her decades to realize what really happened all those years ago. It takes her that long to come to terms with her past.

I highly recommend A Heart of Stone. The book held my attention the way a good mystery would. With details revealed in bits and pieces, I found myself wanting to spend all my time reading this book until I reached the end. A warning - this book is not for the faint of heart.

This was not an easy book to read. The heartwrenching story of what happens to a family of seven whose mother is experiencing an extreme case of post-partum depression left me speechless and emotionally drained. Dorrestein does a fantastic job of drawing the reader into the daily lives of the Van Bemmel family. She tells their story matter-of-factly and without a trace of sentimentality but is still able to create powerfully moving and stunning tale. I do recommend Heart of Stone but with the small warning that your own heart may well break.

I have to admit that I was surprised by how much I _enjoyed_ this book. Ellen is certainly one of the richly textured main characters I can remember in recent fiction-- she never gives in to tragedy or melodrama, even as her mother descends into insanity following the birth of their family's youngest child. Each of the Van Bemmel children is given ample description and personality to make their loss all the more heart-wrenching.

This is one of those suspenseful books that starts in the aftermath and then takes the reader back through the events, leaving them to figure out why things happened the way they did. Dealing with insanity is a tough, tough job, but Dorrestein gives a chilling description of the mother's hallucinatory ravings about demonic possession, as well as an intimate picture of her husband's confusion at what is happening in his warm, close-knit family. Ellen, now in her thirties as she narrates, has trouble dealing with intimacy, as well as conflicting feelings about her own pregnancy, and as she slowly reveals her past like peeling the layers off an onion, one can hardly be surprised at her conflicted emotions.

Reading this book was something akin to driving past a car accident: I was horrified, but compelled to look. This book will haunt you long after you're finished.

"A Heart Of Stone", is a very fine piece of writing. As a novel it is disturbing, however events in this story so closely parallel a recent event in the USA, that the read is more like a prediction that Nostrodamus correctly foresaw. The crime and its cause are not identical, however they are very close and they read almost as though you are reviewing current newspapers. The effect is unnerving at times.

The Author, Renete Dorrestein is from Holland where she is one of the Country's most popular writers. If her work continues to be translated as well as this tale, I foresee her fame growing here as well. What this lady does so well is to get you thinking ahead in anticipation of what horror she eventually reveals. She is wonderful at coaxing the reader along with mundane daily events, and then with a sentence you come close to dropping the book. There was one revelation so demented in its execution I literally put the book aside for several days. As I have said, the book is very intense, however when it reads like today's news, the intensity is raised exponentially.

The Author is also adept at wonderful imagery. There is a passage when a tombstone is being viewed and pondered. The stone is in the shape of a heart. When she is finished talking about what this heart of stone will never do, if you don't feel a chill, it is because you are cold blooded.

The book is not just meant to frighten, it delves deeply into what is a not uncommon occurrence, and then explores the consequences both short and long term. The book is filled with people that do what most would feel is either abnormal, abhorrent, or against all logic of reasonable human nature/conduct. To suggest this is just a frightening tale, or to lightly dismiss the book as another horror novel, is to miss the point and to do the Author a great injustice.

This is a fascinating if disturbing look into the darkest of human conduct. This book will disturb you, as it should.

Is this a mystery? Or a horror story? I would say that it is a novel that is extremely well written. The life of the van Bemmel family is put together, piece by piece, as the book moves along. Rarely have the characters of a novel been painted in such detail that you are sure to know them from somewhere. And just when you thought that you had them figured out, the scenery changes. It all is very logical. But, after finishing the book, your thoughts will come back to it, wondering why things happened that way. Superb craftsmanship.

This terrifying, bone-chilling novel does not depend on mere events, no matter how horrific, for its stunning effects. Dorrestein is much too clever a writer for that. Instead, she recreates with great psychological astuteness the inner workings of main character Ellen Van Bemmel's mind, revealing her memories from the age of twelve to adulthood in a seemingly random sequence, as Ellen allows herself first to remember, and later accept, the unimaginable trauma she has experienced as a child. This trauma is made even more dramatic for the reader because it contrasts so starkly with lovely vignettes of the large, happy family we admire and feel part of in the beginning of the book. Ellen's siblings--sister Billie, brother Kester, and Michael, nicknamed Carlos-- are in every way delightful, normal children, experiencing the same joys and humorous adventures that most readers will have experienced, with parents who are so in love they can hardly keep their hands off each other. It is easy to admire, and even envy, such a family.

And then the idyll abruptly ends, and we don't know exactly how or why. Slowly, inexorably, details are revealed which put Ellen's current life into perspective. A 37-year-old single woman, recently divorced and pregnant as a result of a brief encounter, Ellen has purchased the house where disaster long ago struck her family, and there she awaits the birth of her baby and thinks about the past. This past takes on added poignancy since it was the birth of her youngest sibling that triggered the events that destroyed Ellen's world.

Dorrestein is the consummate literary juggler here as she throws Ellen's innumerable memories, partial memories, and suspicions into the air of her story and manages to keep them all suspended until the heart-stopping, breath-taking conclusion. I'm sure many readers will feel compelled to keep reading this book well into the night--the agony of finding out the details so slowly is more than some of us are willing to bear. A most delicious horror story, especially memorable because Ellen seems so like ourselves.

Renate Dorrestein, a Dutch journalist, feminist and writer of fiction has been one of the Netherlands' must successful authors for some years now. "A Heart of Stone" is her debut novel in English. Ms. Dorrestein is an extraordinary storyteller who almost seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this tale of a horrible family tragedy and the efforts of one of the survivors to come to grips with it.

Ellen Van Bemmel is a forensic pathologist, estranged from her husband and pregnant. She is really looking forward to the birth of her first baby. By chance she discovers that her childhood home, the house where she spent her first twelve years, is up for sale. She buys it and attempts to fix it up, terribly incensed at the former owners for the state of disrepair in which they left it. She is reminded, with a "keen little shock of bitter joy," of the wonderful childhood she had here - of her engagingly eccentric family, her four siblings, including the new baby, her adoring, if somewhat distracted parents, their Americana clipping service, Bureau Van Bemmel, the employees who became part of their extended family. Anyone moving back to the house where he or she grew up would be bombarded by memories. Ellen's memories are haunted by ghosts of loved ones long gone. After twenty-five years she purposefully decides to come to grips with her past - almost as if she is cleaning-out her psychological and emotional house while she cleans No. 11 Lijsterlaan - to make room for brand new life.

The author recreates Ellen's childhood world, telling the little girl's story parallel to the adult's. Although one knows, almost from the beginning, what is going to happen, a sense of tremendous tension and suspense is built, precisely because the tragic, senseless events occur in a happy home - a home filled with the love and laughter of caring parents - good, kind people - and their bright, mischievous, sensitive children. No one really sees "it" coming, not really, not even the reader.

I must say that this novel, although beautifully written, disturbed me greatly. It explores the chilling subject of postpartum psychosis and brought back, for me, memories of the Andrea Yates' case. I found some parts very difficult to read, especially descriptions of the mother's burgeoning psychosis and how each of the Van Bemmel children react differently to what they intuitively feel is "something gone wrong." As Ellen leafs through an old family scrapbook and remembers, the pain and loss of the past are juxtaposed with memories of the good times, and make for some extremely powerful reading.

On one occasion, while in med school, Ellen suddenly jumped up and left the crowded lecture hall. "Finally I had it, the true name of the mystery that had destroyed our family. Postpartum psychosis. The tragedy need never have happened if my mother's condition had been correctly diagnosed and somebody had simply prescribed the right medication for her." And, "But no matter how out of touch with reality she had been in her disturbed state, I now knew that neither electric shock therapy, nor psychoanalysis, nor mood-altering drugs could have made her come to her senses. All she had needed was a little progesterone. That was the most devastating realization of all."

The Van Bemmel family's graves are marked by a heart shaped stone. Read Renate Dorrestein's extraordinary novel to discover how Ellen's own heart of stone is able to heal, finally. Highly recommended for both literary merit and subject matter, but be warned - this is no light read!
JANA

Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but I was left feeling a bit disappointed in this one. I guess they can't all be fours and fives!

The story is told by an adult Ellen, middle child of the Van Bemmel family, who, it is obvious very early on, has suffered some sort of mysterious tragedy. The writing which reveals the unfolding tragedy is pretty stunning in parts --- chilling even. And even though it is fairly obvious WHAT the imminent disaster is, it is compelling to see how it all plays out in the narrative. They all live in a large home in the Netherlands, four children and the two parents, while awaiting the birth of a surprise fifth child. Set in the 1970's, the parents run a "clipping service," that specializes in American news and culture. Their large home is taken up in large part by roomsful of filing cabinets of these various files. This quirky backdrop for the story is an interesting one, and later ocurrences in the novel will leave you with your own thoughts as to how the Americana plays a role in the larger theme.

While my hopes were high through the first half of this suspenseful and often chilling novel, I became increasingly aware that Dorrestein's story is a bit too ambitious, and doesn't deliver enough for me to truly feel a strong connection with the story and its characters. My main beef with "Heart of Stone" is that I liked it so much that I wanted more --- I don't think it was given justice. The family's tragedy occurs in the 1970's, yet we also have a storyline involving an adult Ellen and how this turn of events is still wreaking its havoc on her life. We also have flashbacks into the early eighties, when Ellen is a teenager, as well as vignettes from early on in the story of Ellen's parents' courtship. There was too much attempted here, with unsatisfactory results.

While many of my favorite novels are in the five-hundred-pages-plus range, I guess this thin book just didn't get into enough detail for me, considering the range of the story and the breadth of time being covered.

Written by Renate Dorrestein, one of Holland's best-loved and decorated novelists, this English translation of "A Heart of Stone" is a poignant, shocking, yet unflinching look at the effects of mental illness, it's devastating potential and it's aftermath.

In this novel, Ellen, the central character toggles from the present back into the past 25 years ago to tell the story of how tragedy struck her family. In the present, Ellen struggles to come to grips on the reality of what happened to her family, while just a strongly struggling NOT to remember it. In the past narration, Ellen describes her mother's descent into severe mental illness, and how everyone around the family seems to uncomfortable or unable to do realize what is happening to her children.

I can't say too much about the story without giving away the plot, but I have to tell you that I read it in just a few hours. Once I had been given a "teaser" about the family's past, I had to keep reading. This novel IS disturbing, and does not pull any punches in detailing the helplessness children feel when their parents fail them so hideously.

I can't imagine anyone who reads this novel not being moved enought to post a review about it. It's simply that powerful.