I don't often rush to read new Dutch novels in the week they are released (in fact, I've never done so before, although I probably should), but in this case, I happen to know the author, and was curious to see what sort of a book he's written...

This is an unusually complicated and ambitious book for a first novel. The book seems to be setting out to explore how we are affected by the way our bodies interact with the world around us, in particular through the mouth (although the hair and skin also play a large part).

There are two self-contained, but inter-related, stories: in the first part, we have the first-person narrative of Paul Heineman, a historian who lives in Amsterdam; in the second we have a third-person narrative from the point-of-view of Paul's older brother Frank, a political philosopher with a junior post at Columbia University in New York. Before, after, and between these texts are essays (the monographs) in which the author looks in a more direct way at the mouth, hair and skin.

I'm very grateful to Willem Jardin for encouraging me to read W.G. Sebald, but he only has himself to blame (!) if I say that Paul's story and the monographs reminded me very much of Sebald's technique. Obvious things, like the use of first-person and the photographs in the text, but also more subtle parallels like the extended architectural metaphor. Paul wants to write a thesis based on his grandfather's experiences as a forced labourer in Germany during the war, and subsequently as a meat inspector in the Amsterdam abattoir; when he fails to find a supervisor, he diverts his efforts into building a model of the abattoir. The abattoir complex is described in ways that make us see the parallels between the industrialised brutality of the meat industry and that of the Nazis (I'm oversimplifying here - Jardin does all sorts of other clever things with this metaphor - it's not a piece of crude vegetarian propaganda, but a sensitive examination of how we relate to meat, eating, dentistry, hygiene, death, ...).

Foucault doesn't seem to be mentioned, but I'm sure he's in there somewhere as well, particularly in the second monograph where there is a lot about the justice system acting on hair and skin.

Where Paul's narrative is largely concerned with himself and his increasingly obsessive association with his grandfather's story, Frank's is chiefly about his relationship with Naomi, a philosophy student. The central conceit here is that they use philosophy as a sophisticated form of foreplay, lecturing each other, undressed, on Nietzsche, Hegel and Hannah Arendt from an improvised lectern in the bedroom. A little of this goes a long way, of course: we are fortunately spared the full text of the lectures, but it does give room for a lot of interesting discussion of the relationship between ideas and physical intimacy. Since it all happens against the backdrop of Manhattan landmarks, I found it difficult to resist imaging Woody Allen and Diane Keaton (ca. 20 years ago) as Frank and Naomi. I'm sure that's not what the author intended [I asked: it isn't].

The climax of Frank's narrative is a brilliant set-piece, the Veterans' Day parade, which becomes almost as effective and complex a metaphor as the abattoir.

I found this an enjoyable and challenging read: my Dutch is a bit hit and miss, and I've never studied philosophy. so I certainly missed some of the subtleties. I look forward to coming back to the book and discovering more.

One irritation, which spoilt the last few pages for me: having a background in physical science, it really upsets me when someone quotes a "mathematical" equation full of undefined or unquantifiable parameters. If D is "diagnosis" and B "treatment", how can D/B possibly have a value? But that's just my pedantic instinct kicking in: there's a perfectly good literary reason for putting the formula in there, which has nothing to do with the numbers (you have to see it!). ( )