Tirza

by Arnon Grunberg

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

839.31

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

NIjgh & Van Ditmar, Amsterdam (2007), 430 pages

Description

"Jörgen Hofmeester had it all: a beautiful wife, a nice house with a garden in an upper-class neighborhood in Amsterdam, a respectable job as an editor, two lovely aughters named Ibi and Tirza, and a large amount of money in a Swiss bank account. But during the preparation for Tirza's graduation party, we come to know what he has lost"--P. [4] of cover.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Peppuzzo

The second novel I have read is Tirza, written by the dutch celebrity Arnon Grunberg. Also this is a book about family life, since there is probably nothing else to write about in The Netherlands. But in this case, despite the literary prices (can you imagine, the guy won a price organized by its

editor, twice!), the book is good. There's again a lot of detail, every fact seems to carry with it a deep significance; the story is slow and intense, and everything seems to happen inside the characters, even though there is a lot of things happening outside. A sentence remain impressed in my mind from this book: "sex is humiliation". In the book it has to do with the fact that the main character loved to have is dick licked after some anal sex with his cleaning lady, but it has its impact also outside that context. Tirza is a nice snapshot into family life, or maybe more than that, it is a X-ray picture, an MR-scan - you see everything what's behind the curtain.

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LibraryThing member cmdevries

A long-time, albeit critical, fan of Grunbergs work, I was happy to enjoy Tirza, after not having appreciated much his previous novel, Onze oom. Tirza starts on quite a slow pace, without getting tedious, and the more rapid pace later on works very well with the way the plot develops. The main

character is worked out very well (IMHO). I'm curious about the movie, as I can't really see this story work just as well on the screen.

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LibraryThing member edwinbcn

Tirza is a Dutch novel which completely pulls the reader into the weirdly autistic world of its main protagonist, Jörgen Hofmeester. Hofmeester cannot accept that his daughter is growing up, and cannot live with reality as it is. While the plot is very thin, consisting of little more than the

complications between Hofmeester and his wife, who shows up after three years of absence, and the birthday of his daughter, in whose Moroccan boyfriend Hofmeester seems to recognize Mohammed Atta, the claustrophobic paranoia of the novel seems a completely natural biosphere for this weird story to unfold. The reader is completely drawn in, and despite its length the book continues to fascinate till the very end. Very well done.

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