The Ten Thousand Things [Paperback]

Maria Dermout (Author), Hans Koning (Author)

Book Description

Series: New York Review Books Classics | Publication Date: July 31, 2002

The Ten Thousand Things is a novel of shimmering strangeness—the story of Felicia, who returns with her baby son from Holland to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to the house and garden that were her birthplace, over which her powerful grandmother still presides. There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. First published in Holland in 1955, Maria Dermoût's novel was immediately recognized as a magical work, like nothing else Dutch—or European—literature had seen before. The Ten Thousand Things is an entranced vision of a far-off place that is as convincingly real and intimate as it is exotic, a book that is at once a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in 1955, Dutch author Maria Dermo–t's loosely autobiographical The Ten Thousand Things, trans. by Hans Koning, is now back in print in English. Felicia, who grew up with her Dutch grandmother on an Indonesian island, returns there from Holland with her young son, Himpies, after being robbed and abandoned by her husband. Known by the locals as the "young lady of the Small Garden," she settles easily (despite her superstitious and imperious grandmother) back into the customs and rhythms of the island, eventually accruing enough wealth to live very comfortably. Tragedy strikes when Himpies, who has grown and joined the army, is killed. A new set of characters is then introduced, throwing the narrative off somewhat, but the focus returns to Felicia at the end, as she tries to make sense of the deaths that have shaped her own life. Dermo–t beautifully depicts the idyllic setting and handles the darker aspects of the story-ghosts, superstition, even murder-with equal skill.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“Fans of magic realism will be thrilled to discover a long out-of-print Dutch classic...Dermout writes exquisitely and hauntingly of murder and loss, tolerance, and fear of “the other.” --LIBRARY JOURNAL
"Dermoût beautifully depicts the idyllic setting and handles the darker aspects of the story—ghosts, superstition, even murder—with equal skill." --Publishers Weekly, 2002
"An offbeat narrative that has the timeless tone of legend." –Time
"Mrs. Dermout, in the manner of Thoreau and the early Hemingway, is an extraordinary sensualist. But her approach is not the muzzy, semi-poetic one in which the writer damagingly affixes his own imagination to what he sees. Instead, her instinct for beauty results, again and again, in passages of a startling, unadorned, three-dimensional clarity; often one can almost touch what she describes." –Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker

"Beautiful and eerie" -–The Atlantic

"I might add that the books we return to are informed by potencies—those objects that illumine the text and our own memories. I am thinking of Maria Dermout’s magical The Ten Thousand Things." –Rikki Ducornet, novelist

"This [The Ten Thousand Things] is a beautiful book. What’s curious, you get the tone that makes you recognize that Michael Ondaatje is part of a culture, not simply a singular writer; he's part of a whole way of seeing reality." –Robert Creeley

"A son murdered by the head-hunters of Ceram. Three ghost-sisters playing on an empty beach. The curiosity cabinet and its contents. As the story circles on itself, they number in the thousands, so that anything once loved is eternal, beautiful, unchanged." –Linda Spalding, in Lost Classics

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (July 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159017013X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590170137
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and bold, a true work of ART, July 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ten Thousand Things (Library of the Indies) (Hardcover)

The Ten Thousand Things is an uncommonly odd book. Yet there is an undercurrent of almost suffocating pressure that "betrays" the sometimes modest exposition. It fits into no particular category - magic realism would be the first term that springs to mind - yet the wonderful review on the back flap makes allusions to Hemingway.... It cannot be pigeonholed. " I fear the man of one book," (to paraphrase St. Augustine) and I feel his statement corroborates well with Dermout's gorgeous novel. The exposition is odd yet simple. Her descriptions are so sharp that at times, at the risk sounding silly, they flash off the page. There is no doubt in my mind that this book has been overlooked. I would feel no remorse in suggesting this book to anyone. The "inner bay," "the outer bay," and the garden near the old woman's house are presented in a robust and intriguing manner, far more gut- wrentching than "The English Patient" for my tastes. The Ten Thousand Things is a dreamy fairy tale with a savagely imaginative moral that is far more subliminal than I feel most people, on a haphazard reading, might suspect

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maria Dermout: The Subliminal Hemingway, June 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ten Thousand Things (Library of the Indies) (Hardcover)

"They let themselves drop, their fins upright, as if they were drowning, rose again; they kept together, swam over and under each other, carefully, not touching, with a strangely thoughtful yet casual grace. "Then, as unexpectedly as they had risen, they dropped down into the deep and did not reappear."

I am glad my sister recommended this book to me. It goes to show the best books are in many cases the least popular. With one eye on passage above (read the book to find the wild Proustian metonymical link symbolized by the turtles) , I wonder why The Ten Thousand Things is not more popular. The book is thoroughly steeped in the rhetorical tones of Hemingway; yet the effect is unearthly enough to elude any categorization. Time will reveal the books timeless appeal: in a just literary world this masterpiece would be in every bookstore. Thoroughly weird, thoroughly normal, the book is a lamented reflection of time and death through an irridescent mirror.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mysterious and lovely, August 29, 2002

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ten Thousand Things (Paperback)

Dermout's classic novel is the kind the New York Review of Books Classics loves to bring out: a cult favorite with a one-of-a-kind flavor. The dreamy, simple tone belies the extreme formal complexity of the work: actually consisting really of a novella and several appended tales, the work brings everything together at the conclusion. This is a book to be read and re-read; its mysteries are not readily plumbed but are rewarding nonetheless.