H. M. van den Brink

Novelist and broadcaster van den Brink wrote this extended essay during the run-up to the Dutch general election of March 2017, in which Geert Wilders and his right-wing populist PVV party were expecting to do well, surfing the same wave as Trump and Brexit. In the event the PVV was the second-largest party, but this placing was mostly an artefact due to the extreme fragmentation of traditional parties: it only obtained 13.1% of the vote. The election led to a record 225 days of negotiation show more before a coalition (not including the PVV) could be formed under the premiership of Mark Rutte.

Van den Brink uses Wilders’s well-known passion for visiting the fairy-tale theme park, De Efteling, as a hook to explore the way the new populism appeals to its supporters through storytelling rather than an objective discourse of facts and policies. In the process he reminds us that the idea of a canon of “traditional” folk-tales was largely a creation of nineteenth-century nationalists seeking to create a unifying culture for new nation-states like Germany, and that De Efteling, which carefully nurtures its own special commercial brand of folk-tale magic largely based on the work of Dutch illustrator Anton Pieck (1895-1987), was a mid-20th-century job-creation project for an impoverished part of North Brabant. The idealised version of national identity and social relations that Wilders and his colleagues promise to “restore” for the disenchanted people who vote for them is just as illusory, van den Brink argues, and the problem we face is not so much in the lies that the populists are telling, but more in the way that otherwise intelligent adults have suddenly started believing in fairy tales as though they could be literally true. And the only logical conclusion if they persist in that illusion is that we are going to end up with a King Wilders sitting in his fantasy palace in De Efteling with a gold-plated plastic crown on his implausible hair... show less

First novel of this relatively unknown Dutch writer. In this novel Vd Brink writes about an imaginary affair between the Catalan writer Pla and his muse Aurora.

Pla is not in any way sympathetic – he choses the easy way out of the Spanish civil war, practising victim blame on those who do make a morally superior choice. Pla is an old, grumpy man, who cannot even cook or produce anything, except some duplicitous writings. And yet. Pla does get close to the essence of life with his emphasis show more on food and lust, the only two matters that count in one’s life. Aurora basically joins Pla is his home, when she and her family are facing the aftermath of the Spanish civil war and need a protector. She enters a period of five years of continuous seduction of the writer. Their lustful interaction is not described explicitly, only hinted at and yet it does create an erotic suspense that only few writers manage to create.

In the novel Pla is travelling by boat via Venezuela to Buenos Aires, where Aurora has set up shop after she left him. Pla laments his desire, something he suspects has to do with love. He longs for her. In all the years since she left him, she has been writing explicit letters about her own love life and lust feelings for him. Pla has paid her to write these letters, and this steady source of income has made the difference in Aurora’s life. When he arrives, it becomes clear that Aurora stays in a wooden house she has constructed jointly with her fat, but good-natured husband Carnicero.

Brink alternates a third person POV between Pla and Aurora. Thus we get an idea of the small irritations and projections that they commit to each other. Also we find out how Carnicero has played a key role in helping Aurora develop her crude, pornographic writing skills. Carnicero seems like a friendly cuck-old, who does not mind Pla and Aurora engaging in daily lust trysts. Meanwhile Pla wonders whether he has love with her or with an imagined younger Aurora? Does he imagine himself the way he was, or the way he is (a near seventy year old in a body that is despicable). After a flash flood and heavy downpour, Pla and Carnicero work hard to restore the house, and Pla leaves, going back to Catalonia. The last chapter sees Pla shuffling to the beach from his mansion on the coast. show less

H. M. van den Brink likes Spain and especially Spanish food. At times he gets philosophical about it. "Desire wants eternity and in the world of mortals there is no other eternity than repetition." Or eat a lot of what you like.

He gets deeper later when one trip to Spain is almost over and overcome by summer heat and melancholy he talks about how Hemingway didn't properly finish Death in the Afternoon, instead writing about what he didn't include in the book. Van den Brink then uses the show more same method to finish this book, presumably with more satisfying results.

But most of all, he visits Madrid, Barcelona and other, smaller places, and writes about the food. Restaurants, cafes, markets, homes - he eats, describes the menu and the circumstances in which he ate (with coffee, newspaper, old friends, new friends) and gives the recipe. There are many good recipes here and they all seem fairly doable. A satisfying book about Spanish food and Spain in general. show less

Over het water is a powerful novella that reverberates through its warm story. All motives and story lines are about nostalgia to a time unspoilt. This pure time lies in youth, before World War II. The novella is based on the reminiscences of a man looking back at the time of rowing in boyhood. He is looking back at friendship in a halcyon time. However, the story is also about their trainer. The tenderness of the trainer, not at all erotic, seems to transport the trainer back to some golden show more days in his past, perhaps friendship in his youth in an unspoilt Germany of years before the 1930s. show less