Status
Available
Genres
Publication
NYRB Classics (2002), 296 pages
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. HTML:In Wild, Cheryl Strayed writes of The Ten Thousand Things: "Each of Dermoût??s sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.? And it's true, The Ten Thousand Things is at once novel of shimmering strangeness??and familiarity. It is 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… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member JimmyChanga
It is a mess, but it is a beautiful mess. I feel the book but I don't know what it is saying exactly. That is the best kind. The structure is unconventional; reading it, I had no idea how to read it, which is a nice feeling: it is the feeling of reading the very first novel. And then there are the
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things from the title, the imbued significance (though, thankfully, not symbolism) of things, the aura and magic, the legends and rumors, the history and narrative: the things that compose a life. And the emotions that these things build up with each repetition, each repetition weighing more because it has soaked up more in its path. Show Less
LibraryThing member Esta1923
I read this haunting book twice before I completely realized its beauty. The landscape affects the characters ~~ their memories and actions. They are, in a sense, haunted....and so was I.
LibraryThing member .Monkey.
"Of all the houses not one was standing whole; they had collapsed with an earthquake and been cleared away. Here and there a piece of an old house had remained: a wing, a wall only, and later people built against it, usually just a few shabby rooms.
What was left of all the glory?
Yet something
It took me a while to get through the first half of this book. A month, in fact, to read 80 pages. But I didn't want to quit it, the writing was so evocative, so beautiful and captivating, so...unique. Her imagery, and style, is just, something else entirely. Even though the story, at this point, is very slow-paced and mostly in Felicia's thoughts and observations, there is simply something magical in the way Dermoût expresses everything. There is a style and a rhythm to her writing that you just want to lounge in. I adored the writing, I just wasn't pulled in to the story yet.
"He did like the curiosities cabinet, because it belonged to the Garden—and he loved the Garden.
He loved it in his own way—without much ado, as it was, as it had been for seven years for the two children Domingoes and Himpies. They had never just looked at it, they had never seen that the Garden was "beautiful" and so terribly far away and quiet, they had not seen the fear in the Garden. Together they had never been afraid."
But the second half is no longer just The Woman of the Small Garden, the second half has much more going on, and I read it in a single sitting. In these sections there are other stories that are loosely intertwined with her own, which take the forefront up until the end, when they are weaved smoothly back in together with the Lady. These stories have more happening in them; rather than long stretches of time passing slowly, they are fast glimpses.
"When the moon rose above the inner bay, which lay as quiet as a lake, and shone over the foliage of the trees and palms on the beach, it seemed almost day. The small leaves of the many palms gleamed as if wet, as if the moonlight would roll off them in silver drops and trickles. The trunks of the plane trees lighted up gray and silvery white, the foliage took on a hard, almost metallic gleam.
...
The species of lobster with the single, monstrously enlarged claw which was constantly moving up and down would be somewhere near the water, waving at the moon—that's what they did."
It's a difficult book to describe. Not very much happens, especially not with the central character. She lives, she learns, she ages. But it's a brilliant, moving, enchanting piece of work that everyone should experience. Highly recommended.
"Sjeba and her husband, Henry, who was still cowherd, stayed with her. Slowly they had become the only ones left from the past, the only ones who knew everything, had gone through everything—anyway, the cows had to be milked."
What was left of all the glory?
Yet something
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seemed to have lingered in those gardens of the old, the past, of the so-very-long-ago."It took me a while to get through the first half of this book. A month, in fact, to read 80 pages. But I didn't want to quit it, the writing was so evocative, so beautiful and captivating, so...unique. Her imagery, and style, is just, something else entirely. Even though the story, at this point, is very slow-paced and mostly in Felicia's thoughts and observations, there is simply something magical in the way Dermoût expresses everything. There is a style and a rhythm to her writing that you just want to lounge in. I adored the writing, I just wasn't pulled in to the story yet.
"He did like the curiosities cabinet, because it belonged to the Garden—and he loved the Garden.
He loved it in his own way—without much ado, as it was, as it had been for seven years for the two children Domingoes and Himpies. They had never just looked at it, they had never seen that the Garden was "beautiful" and so terribly far away and quiet, they had not seen the fear in the Garden. Together they had never been afraid."
But the second half is no longer just The Woman of the Small Garden, the second half has much more going on, and I read it in a single sitting. In these sections there are other stories that are loosely intertwined with her own, which take the forefront up until the end, when they are weaved smoothly back in together with the Lady. These stories have more happening in them; rather than long stretches of time passing slowly, they are fast glimpses.
"When the moon rose above the inner bay, which lay as quiet as a lake, and shone over the foliage of the trees and palms on the beach, it seemed almost day. The small leaves of the many palms gleamed as if wet, as if the moonlight would roll off them in silver drops and trickles. The trunks of the plane trees lighted up gray and silvery white, the foliage took on a hard, almost metallic gleam.
...
The species of lobster with the single, monstrously enlarged claw which was constantly moving up and down would be somewhere near the water, waving at the moon—that's what they did."
It's a difficult book to describe. Not very much happens, especially not with the central character. She lives, she learns, she ages. But it's a brilliant, moving, enchanting piece of work that everyone should experience. Highly recommended.
"Sjeba and her husband, Henry, who was still cowherd, stayed with her. Slowly they had become the only ones left from the past, the only ones who knew everything, had gone through everything—anyway, the cows had to be milked."
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LibraryThing member Frenzie
The best Dutch book I've read since... well, I haven't read much Dutch literature lately. I recommend it no matter what your tastes are. If I wrote anything more I'd be giving away too much already. Suffice it to say that it's layered and deep while still using simple language in the Indonesian
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oral tradition. Show Less
LibraryThing member Meredy
I may have to come back to The Ten Thousand Things and give it another try later on. For now, I simply didn't connect with it.
I don't mind a slow pace and a contemplative manner, and I make allowances for translations. But 78 pages in, representing a quarter of the book, I had to put it aside. I
(Not rated)
I don't mind a slow pace and a contemplative manner, and I make allowances for translations. But 78 pages in, representing a quarter of the book, I had to put it aside. I
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just didn't have enough patience for the dithery style, the excess of dashes and unfinished sentences and vague conversational asides. It effectively conveyed the feeling of listening to an old woman ramble, but I'm not up for listening to an old woman ramble right now, even though when my time comes I hope someone will listen to me. So--I'm sorry if this is uncharitable, but I had to move on.(Not rated)
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LibraryThing member abycats
This book was mentioned multiple times by Cheryl Strayed in her memoir "Wild." It is a series of engaging, linked tales that include an overlay of magic. Nice but hardly earth shattering.
LibraryThing member Alhickey1
This book was outstanding. I literally could hardly put it down. I read it in two sittings! This author does not describe things, she paints you a clear and vivid picture. You are not an observer of the island, you are there. You are not hearing of the characters, you know them intimately. Just
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when you think she has taken you on to another story, she brings it all together and ties them together with a neat little piece of sea grass. You shiver with the foreshadowing. You rebuke, but forgive. You mourn and empathize. Your heart fills with understanding. And in the end, you reluctantly put the book down and "try to go on living." Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
"She sat quietly in her chair, they weren't a hundred things but much more than a hundred, and not only hers; a hundred times 'a hundred things,' next to each other, separate from each other, touching here and there flowing into each other, without any link anywhere, and at the same time linked
After her husband left her, Felicia returns with her young son to the island in the Dutch East Indies where she grew up to live with her grandmother in a house in a lush garden near the tropical inner bay. There's a bit of magical realism here (though only distantly-related to the more well-known Latin American magical realism), and from the beginning we know the garden is inhabited by ghosts, in particularly the ghosts of three small girls who died there. The prose is dreamy and surreal as we follow the day to day lives of Felicia and her grandmother, as Felicia's son Himpies moves through an idyllic childhood to young adulthood.
Then a little more than half-way through the book the focus changes and there are three short-story-like chapters, each focusing on a new and seemingly unrelated character and events, while still being set on the island. This bothered a lot of the readers in the Litsy Book Club, and at first I thought that perhaps the book was not a novel, but actually a novella and short story collection. But in the end, I think it is all tied up fairly well.
The setting of the book is an important part of its appeal, and it is also apparently based in large part on the author's life, as she too grew up in the Dutch East Indies, and returned as an adult. For me, some parts were evocative of my childhood growing up on a tropical island in the Dutch West Indies. This is one I recommend, but it for some reason was not one I was constantly thinking about when not reading it, or one I felt compelled to keep reading.
3 stars
FIRST LINE: "On the island in the Moluccas there were a few gardens left from the great days of spice growing and 'spice parks'--a few only."
LAST LINE: "Then the lady of the Small Garden whose name was Felicia stood up from her chair obediently and was looking around at the inner bay in the moonlight--it would remain there always--she went with them, under the trees and indoors, to drink her cup of coffee and try again to go on living."
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forever...."After her husband left her, Felicia returns with her young son to the island in the Dutch East Indies where she grew up to live with her grandmother in a house in a lush garden near the tropical inner bay. There's a bit of magical realism here (though only distantly-related to the more well-known Latin American magical realism), and from the beginning we know the garden is inhabited by ghosts, in particularly the ghosts of three small girls who died there. The prose is dreamy and surreal as we follow the day to day lives of Felicia and her grandmother, as Felicia's son Himpies moves through an idyllic childhood to young adulthood.
Then a little more than half-way through the book the focus changes and there are three short-story-like chapters, each focusing on a new and seemingly unrelated character and events, while still being set on the island. This bothered a lot of the readers in the Litsy Book Club, and at first I thought that perhaps the book was not a novel, but actually a novella and short story collection. But in the end, I think it is all tied up fairly well.
The setting of the book is an important part of its appeal, and it is also apparently based in large part on the author's life, as she too grew up in the Dutch East Indies, and returned as an adult. For me, some parts were evocative of my childhood growing up on a tropical island in the Dutch West Indies. This is one I recommend, but it for some reason was not one I was constantly thinking about when not reading it, or one I felt compelled to keep reading.
3 stars
FIRST LINE: "On the island in the Moluccas there were a few gardens left from the great days of spice growing and 'spice parks'--a few only."
LAST LINE: "Then the lady of the Small Garden whose name was Felicia stood up from her chair obediently and was looking around at the inner bay in the moonlight--it would remain there always--she went with them, under the trees and indoors, to drink her cup of coffee and try again to go on living."
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Language
Original language
English