The Remembered Soldier - Anjet Daanje

A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:
Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:

support the site

The Remembered Soldier

by
Anjet Daanje

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Remembered Soldier
Author:	Anjet Daanje
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2019 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	562 pages
Original in:	Dutch
Availability:	The Remembered Soldier - US
	The Remembered Soldier - UK
	The Remembered Soldier - Canada
	Le soldat remémoré - France
	Der erinnerte Soldat - Deutschland

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Dutch title: De herinnerde soldaat
Translated by David McKay

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B+ : fine, big novel of shaping life and identity

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
NRC	A+	9/4/2020	Thomas de Veen

From the Reviews:

"De herinnerde soldaat is een groots werk, een zeer, zeer goede roman, die ik niet gauw zal vergeten. (...) Het is een roman die verhaalt over oorlog en liefde, over duisternis en geluk en de even zo belangrijke alledaagsheid daartussenin, over intimiteit en begoocheling, én op een verrassende manier over identiteit. Een roman die je listig op het verkeerde been zet (.....) Dan wordt De herinnerde soldaat desoriënterend, op een voortstuwende, beklemmende manier. (...) Daar houdt het nog niet op, met de onvoorspelbare wendingen en tegelijk cirkeltjes-draaien, dat steeds benauwender wordt. Daanje combineert een steeds spannender en beklemmender wordend verhaal met grote literaire diepte, met confronterende vragen." - Thomas de Veen, NRC

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       The 'remembered soldier' of the title is a man who was found in Merckem in December 1917 and who, when the novel opens, has spent the past four years in the Guislain Asylum. He remembers nothing of his past, not even his name; at the asylum they name him 'Noon Merckem' since he was brought to the field hospital at around noontime. His doctor has an advertisement running in the newspaper, hoping to find the man's relatives or family, and women regularly show up to see if this amnesiac is their lost-in-the-war husband. One does then identify him as her husband -- as: "Amand Stephaan Coppens, age thirty-five, height one meter sixty-three, disappeared near Diksmuide on the eighteenth of December 1917", and this Julienne soon takes him home with her, back to their two children, Gus and Rose, in Kortrijk.
       It's been eight years since they lived together -- but Amand remembers nothing of this past. Amand Coppens had his own photography studio, and Julienne has run the business for the past eight years, learning how to develop photographs and also selling other odds and ends, though she barely scrapes by during these difficult times. Slowly, the returned soldier is integrated into the family's life and business; he re(?)learns the trade, and, after first sleeping separately from Julienne, eventually shares her bed again. He isn't completely mentally fit -- manifesting itself most clearly in the nightmares that he sometimes has -- but adapts reasonably well; the couple's life is soon relatively 'normal'.
       Julienne is far from the only woman whose husband went missing in the war, and many still live with a painful absence -- making for a business opportunity that Julienne and Amand soon exploit, with Amand posing for a photograph with the widows. As they eventually come to describe what they are offering, advertising their service:

And you, dear reader, can meet him in the flesh, this man who returned from the dead, and have your photograph taken with him for the trifling sum of ten francs, a photograph he will sign for you in person, in order that you may possess a lasting memento of this unique encounter, to serve as a reminder of the miracles this world may have in store for any one of us.

It turns out to be a popular request -- and so:

They sell their happiness at seven francs a photo, and after a while they brazenly raise the price to eight francs and, when no one complains, to nine and even to ten, and a few weeks later, on a Saturday evening, after they've done the accounts, they have so much money, more than she's seen in one place for years

Julienne had been scraping by, sending seven-year-old Rose to buy their food because she owed money to all the shops and the storekeepers were less likely to turn away the young child. Now, they're slowly able to enjoy a bit more of life.
Amand remembers nothing of their life together. Julienne slowly fills in some of the blanks -- noting also some of the differences, not least when they become intimate again, which she admits is now very different from the time before the war:

(H)e asks what kind of marriage they did have, and she thinks about how to phrase it and comes up with contented and respectable, and he can't help laughing and then neither can she, she say she had no idea it could also be this way, such passion, that's the word she uses, and such all-consuming happiness, if I had known, she say, I would never have survived all those years of waiting.

Still, Amand continues to wonder about what she isn't telling him, and whether there are things about which she is lying. He discovers some inconsistencies -- such as her explanation for having moved from Meenen, where they came from and had lived. She had told him: "their house was bombed by the British when they liberated the town", but when he goes there he finds the house still standing, just abandoned, finding himself: "confounded by the sight of his own name, Photography A. Coppens, in elegant letters on the shop front" -- and:

(H)e doesn't understand, why would she have lief to him about something like this, it seems senseless, inexplicable, and that's what scares him, more than the lie itself

Cutting close to home he also comes to realize, when it is Rose's birthday, that she must have been conceived two months after he was mobilized, leaving him wondering how he could be her father.
Amand can't help but think about Julienne:

(T)here's too much she's not telling him, and he doesn't dare ask why, he's not sure she know the reason herself, maybe the truth is so shocking she refuses to face it.

Unsurprisingly, some dark truths -- repressed as well as hidden -- hang over them, even as they build their life together, eventually also managing to move home and shop to a nicer address as their business continues to do well.
They shape their lives, the way they want to present themselves -- and also for themselves. Julienne is the driving force, but Amand goes along with it; at one point: "they go through their whole life together in the same way, taking stock and negotiating, combining some things and discarding others" -- concluding:

And it's a good story, they both think i's romantic and credible, and it's long after midnight, they're whispering to each other in the darkness of their bedroom and they're finally done, their whole history together has been reviewed and revised and approved

Amand is long a largely blank slate, with Julienne guiding him to shape who he is -- but even early one he recognizes that she is engaging in something of a similar exercise herself:

She's reinventing herself, that's his impression, not just her clothes and her hair, but also her habits, her opinions, her choice of words, and even the way she is with him

       Near the end, when he has gotten to know her much better, the sense is all the stronger: "And in that instant he sees right through her, how her whole life long she's been reinventing herself". The question is, of course, whether that reïnvention extends to Amand -- is she making something new and different out of her husband, or is this man even really the man who was her husband .....
       As blank a slate as Amand is, he is not entirely so, as his vivid nightmares already suggest, and buried truths about him surface as well. His is ultimately a quest to find himself -- leaving him also having to decide about whether to cling to the past or embrace a different life, in a nicely turned resolution to the novel.
       The Remembered Soldier is a fairly long novel, with Daanje reïnforcing the sense of a slow, steady, unrelenting moving-forward with a prose-style that has the vast majority of paragraphs begin with: "And". The two character-portraits, of Amand and Julienne, are particularly impressive -- especially in the way the layers of self and past (and reïnvention) are slowly presented to the reader.
       A solid, engaging novel, The Remembered Soldier also uses the historical period and place well, making for a rich read.

- M.A.Orthofer, 13 April 2025

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

The Remembered Soldier:

New Vessel Press publicity page
Scribe publicity page
Uitgeverij Passage publicity page
Friedenauer Presse publicity page

Reviews:

Anjet Daanje:

Official site

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Dutch literature

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

Dutch author Anjet Daanje was born in 1965.

- Return to top of the page -