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Rituals

by
Cees Nooteboom

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Our Assessment:

A : an excellent, thoughtful, touching novel

See our review for fuller assessment.

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The complete review's Review:

       Cees Nooteboom's short novel is an excellent little work that is essentially about three suicides. The book begins with a short Intermezzo, set in 1963. Inni Winthrop's wife, Zita, leaves him and he commits suicide.
       Inni is a "dilettante in the Italian sense of the word." He has enough money to live comfortably. He dabbles in art dealing, writes a horoscope for a newspaper, and follows the stock and commodity markets. All in all he wanders through life without many cares or great ambition, and when his wife can no longer take it she leaves him. It crushes him -- hence the suicide -- but even in killing himself he achieves no resounding success, not managing to inflict fatal damage to himself.
       The longer sections of the book that follow recount Inni's encounters with two men, father and son, Arnold and Philip Taads, one in 1953, the other in 1973.
       Both Taads live in relative isolation, set to strict routines out of which they have made rituals that completely determine their lives. Inni is an observer, seemingly incapable of action that would alter these routines (presumably the reason both Taads let him in their lives).
       Each Taads is looking for some self-fulfillment. The father never had any contact with the son -- and neither could find in family any fulfillment. The father is not at all religious or spiritual, while the son turns to Japanese ideals and lives by these (though never wanting to visit the modern Japan, which he considers only a corrupted form of his ideal).
       Nooteboom tells the story very well as these three men look for their place in the world. He avoids the trap of idealization of the East, managing to pull off a green-tea ceremony and a few descriptions of yoga without sounding ridiculous or pompous, with Inni providing that proper skeptical point of view.
       The three sections each manage to be moving, the conclusions thoughtful and well done. Inni may seem too purposeless in his life, but Nooteboom adds some shadings to his character that help, and the others make for interesting contrasts.

       An excellent book, highly recommended.

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Links:

• MacLehose Press publicity page
• Suhrkamp publicity page
• Dutch Foundation for Literature information page

• Book around the Corner
• Buried in Print
• Tony's Reading List
• Dieter Wunderlich (German)

• IMDb page

• Official site
• The complete review's Cees Nooteboom page
• Cees Nooteboom at books and writers