Customer Reviews

Two Women

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Two women does not have the grandeur of a Discovery of Heaven, Last Call or The Assault; but it is not meant in this way. The characters in this smaller novel of Mulish show traces of the themes Mulish uses throughout his organic oeuvre. The plot is mesmerizing as it unwinds and gives us insight into the lives of ordinary people that struggle with coming to terms with what counts in their lives; namely love and their loved ones. It also serves as an example of how same-sex love is nothing out of the ordinary, and even though this might now seem somewhat outdated (the book was published early 1970s) for the Netherlands at least, this only proves that through such book as Mulishes we have established something of a more normal outlook on love in all its forms.

As an expatriate living in The Netherlands, I've read a number of Mulisch's books. It's part of the naturalization process. Until now I've been either unimpressed or disliked them all. Anti-climatic and forced come to mind. "Two Women", however, redeemed Mulisch for me. I stayed up the entire night reading it. I was breathless.

It is my intention to read it again today. It is a book I feel compelled to study.

I read the book in Dutch and thus I can't vouch for the English translation. In Dutch it is stunning. Poignant. It speaks of the landscape and the culture and the language in a way that few other Dutch classics do.

Unbelievable that this book was written 30 years ago and that it was written by a man...

A beautiful, unadorned love story of the relationship between 2 women, Laura and Sylvia. The narrator, Laura, is on her way to Nice (France), where her mother has died. Meanwhile she recounts the events of the past half year. Out of the blue she fell in love with the much younger Sylvia. For both of them this is their first experience with lesbian love, but everything seems to go pretty normal. Except that it becomes more and more apparent that Sylvia has huge problems communicating and in the end this leads to her fall.

A book that is absolutely worthwhile to read, a classic of Dutch literature.

this book is as if someone has punched you in the gut. i think the end wasn't revealed until it was the end, which is always good. i read this book in german, which may have caused me to miss a couple things, but it was very good nonetheless.

I think the author of this book is over-valued. This book is not very inspiring. The emotions of the main caracters are, as always, "not real". The whole story is constructed from "above". And this way of telling a story is from my point of view to mathematical.

A nice little novel that reads really fast and easy, a pleasure to read. But it's to repetive and to much of a soap story, unreal. Maybe Mulisch wants it that way, binding the links to Orpheus and Oidipus. It's not a gay memmoar that it's "though being a lesbian" but instead (the story) lends to the extreme, in the relations, in the happenings aso. - it is just to perfect - one doesn't get the real bad smell of the ordinary day love, it just crash boom bang, wow, can you do that again! She shaves of all her hair, the car that drives by her crashes...after a while nothing surprises you anymore and one just waits for the final bang.
Worth reading but my heart is not bleeding!