The Great Longing

The Great longing is a great book, it is clearly another one of Marcel Moring's fantastic works of literature, he is one of the greatest contemporary dutch writers, although not always recognized as such (yet). This book, although not as powerful and haunting as his third book, In Babylon, is without a doubt worth reading. It is the story fo two brothers and a sister, who lost their parents when they were young. As the story unveils itself, we learn more and more about what happened when they were young, meanwhile understanding the characters, what they do and what drives them better. Sometimes however, the book seems somewhat obvious, we see this for instance in the professions of the three main figures. Raoh, the photographers, seems to have certain photographic images in his mind of what happened the day their parents were killed in a car crash. His twin sister Lisa however, is an artist, who only remembers certain things, but paints a picture for Sam, the child who can't remember anything about what happened, even though he was old enough to understand. Sam, who archives files for a living, seems to archive the memories he gets from his brother and sister, although slowly the memories start unfolding themselves. The book is however brilliantly written, and Marcel Moring really shows his talent for writing and storytelling in all three of his book (the other two, particularly In Babylon, I certainly reccomend to you). If you would like to read something, new refreshing, different, try reading this dutch author. And if you liked this, maybe you should try Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), or Hermann Hesse (Demian), a personal favorite of mine with similar talent for storytelling and at the same time leaving you with many thoughts and questions after finishing the book.

Our book discussion group read this book and all of us were in agreement that this author is brilliant. The story is evocative and haunting. The decayed inner life of the protagonist is reflected against the backdrop of a decayed inner city. There is love and there is hope but the author makes us beat it out of this story. It cries out for discussion. It is crafted to perfection.