by Cees Nooteboom ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 1983
Inni (for Inigo) Wintrop is a Dutchman in his forties: ""A hole, a chameleon, a being that could be given content, complete with attitude and accent--it was all the same to him, and Amsterdam offered every opportunity for mimicry. 'You don't have to live,' his friend the writer had once said to him, 'you allow yourself to be distracted'"" Inni is divorced from wife Zita (whose departure drove him to an unsuccessful suicide attempt); he writes horoscopes for a newspaper, plays the stock market, dabbles in buying art, and finds fitful spiritual refreshment in the arms of women. But it will be two men, a father and son, who will make the firmest impress on Inni's feckless clay. Arnold Taads, a misanthrope living in the mountains, a friend of Inni's aunt, gives Inni the first inklings of how firm a character can get; years later, Inni will meet up with Philip Taads, the son, a Zen-obsessed anchorite with a self-abnegating passion for the Japanese tea ceremony and its objects. And, between these two extremes--the definition of Taads Sr., the erasure of Taads Jr.--Inni will find a fruitful, wobbling middle-path. Nooteboom, an established Dutch novelist (though this is his first book to be translated into English), cobbles up Inni as a deliberately, almost metaphysically charming man; the novel is in no hurry whatsoever, finding bits of wisdom here and there. And though there are a few too many sage aphorisms and philosophical set-pieces (the ""rituals"" of the title), with the story never going much beyond the book's pleasant but obvious opening premises, this is a sweetly agreeable novel for all its thinness--and this year's Pegasus Prize winner.
Pub Date: April 20, 1983
ISBN: 0156003945
Page Count: -
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: N/A
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983
Categories: FICTION
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