Customer Reviews

The Ten Thousand Things

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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

"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.

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.

Much has been said in praise of this book before, so I would only like to add that not only is it beautifully written, but it also reflects a deep understanding of the place where the story unfolds. Thus the author paints a realistic (though sad) picture of the Moluccas and their people, rather than just using them as an exotic background to her story.

I can see why some would compare the writing style to Hemingway, but Dermout's imprint is clearly a feminine one. The language is simple and the sense of nostalgia it conjures is rich and complex, but it is never tinged by the scent of spilled beer - rather, crushed flowers. This is a dreamy tale with a core of sadness. Read it aloud to someone and notice how your appreciation of the story grows.

The Ten Thousand things seems to be a book that inspires comparisons. I've heard Thoreau and Hemingway mentioned, and for my part I kept thinking about Muriel Wylie and Annie Dillard. The Lady of the Small Garden and her night of murders is a wonderful manner to trace life on these Indonesian islands, providing a lush backdrop for the author's meditations on life. Unfortunately, there are places where the translation from the Dutch is a bit clunky and breaks up the text. But those moments are almost entirely forgivable.

Enchanting story that swirls with a gently mystical appreciation for Ambon in the colonial era, full of observations of local mystical culture and a deep, sometimes ambivalent love for the island.

"The Professor" is a gem embedded in a sleek silver bracelet. A fantastic novel like the South American variety. Reoccurring phrases are just right, startling.

The last member of a Dutch colonial family lives on an island in the Moluccas (the Spice Islands, now of Indonesia). Section one lyrically describes the island. Section two flashes back to her girlhood with her grandmother; her return from schooling in Holland, where she had a baby; the baby's growth; and the circumstances of his death. Section three is formed by three independent short stories in which a murder occurs. In the fourth section, Felicia, "the lady of the Small Garden," meets the ghosts of those murdered in the previous section and tries to come to terms with the semantic distinction between "being killed" and "dying."

First published in Dutch in 1955. Translated by Hans Koning.

what i find most striking about the other reviews of this book is their failure to comment on the fact that this is not a novel.it's a collection of fused fragments.there is a good novella here ,three pretty good short stories and a pair of bookends.the bookends are a literary device aimed at contriving a unity that doesn't flow from what you read.there is a rather boring "foreward" and a moderately more interesting "afterward".i suspect that either the author or an editor concluded rightly that there wasn't much of a market for the fragments of an unknown elderly writer . hence it was decided,this was going to be a novel even if it wasn't.what difference does it make ? well i was so bored by the"lovely","atmoospheric","foreward" that i almost stopped reading the book. i assumed this was an integral part of a novel and not a good portent. as it turns out you can easily skip this part and get on to the meat of the book.in most instances you'll be glad you did.dermout was a good writer.she wasn't a novelist.knowing that will probably increase most peoples pleasure in reading the book ,particularly those who are impatient with seemingly unending description.i almost hate to say it but dermout would have benefited from reading simenon.

Published in Holland in 1955, this has earned a lot of praise for being a singular, mysterious book like nothing else. It's the story of a Indonesian, Felicia, who returns from Holland to her native Indonesia with her baby son.