In November 2008 I spent a week on a studytrip in Amsterdam getting to know the new main library there. While a Dutch collegue showed me around she pointed to some glass cases with what seemed to be book covers without any pages inside of them and told me about Nederland Leest or Netherland Reads. Nederland Leest is based on the community reading programme One Book, One City which many of you might be familiar with. The idea is that everybody reads the same book and then various events, discussions ect. are arranged on that book. In Holland the public libraries gave copies of the chosen book free of charge for their members. The book chosen for 2008 Nederland Leest was Twee vrouwen (Two Women) by Harry Mulisch, a well respected Dutch author of whom, I must admit, I had not even heard before my visit to Amsterdam!
Two special editions of Twee vrouwen were printed for the community reading programme, a regular edition and an easy reader version. My Dutch collegues gave me both and we joked that I might try the easy reader first and maybe even understand something, the joke being, of course, that I don't know any Dutch at all. Ever since my visit to Amsterdam I have wanted to read the book, a love story between two women first published in 1975, though. I soon found out it had been translated into English, but was not very easy to find. As this year I'm participating in the GLBT Challenge I thought, well, now or never, I'll try to find an English copy to read. I finally got it, through ILL from Germany!
Two Women is a little book, under 200 pages, and it starts out as a pretty average, though well-written, story about a past love affair. The narrator's mother has died in France and she decides to drive from her home in Amsterdam to Nice to arrange for the funeral. On the way she has time to reminisce about her relationship with the young Sylvia. But what starts as something average turns out to be anything but average! Two Women is a brilliantly constructed story of love and betrayal, where things are not all the time what they seem at first. The ending of the book is simply breathtaking! I finished reading the book a week ago and I'm still mulling the ending over in my mind. I urge anyone interested in reading a vintage story of love between two women to rush to find themselves a copy of Two Women! But be prepared, this is not a happy story.
The empty book covers in the Amsterdam Main Library were entries to the new cover for Twee vrouwen competition. Here are two pictures I took of them. The cover in the bottom picture was the winner. Designed by a 17-year old girl, if I remember correctly. The books you see in the photo above are the two Dutch editions of Two Women I was given in Amsterdam. The book was also filmed in 1979 (with Bibi Andersson, Sandrine Dumas and Anthony Perkins starring), and the bookmark is about the film.
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