Ellen Van Bemmel, the heroine of this tauntly written novel, looks back on a tragedy that happened in her family when she was 12 years old. The story, told in flashbacks, deals with a family that, like many families, looks happy and content to outsiders but is actually coming apart for the participants. The heroine's present day pregnancy adds texture to the character and is the impetus that makes the heroine deal with the tragedy that afflicted her family.
Well rounded as most of the characters are, I feel that the author could have done more with the father figure. I liked the sparsness of the language and recommed the book if you like stories of how people deal with the consequences of dysfunctional familes.

A HEART OF STONE - By Renate Dorrestein

Of all the novels I've read this year, this one I feel the most strongly about. As I read the book, I pictured it in my mind, as if I was watching a black and white film. The story is told in flashbacks, going from one time period to another. The flashes are brief. We'll get a scene here, another scene there. And through this technique, we slowly learn the story of Ellen Van Bemmel, and her memories of a family that appeared happy to the rest of the world, but in reality was full of turmoil and unhappiness.

Ellen had many happy memories of her father, sitting on his lap and laying her head on his chest, feeling safe. No one could hurt her when she was with Daddy. He had promised her. And she loved her mother. Her parents seemed so in love, at least from what she remembered. Her beautiful sister Billie (Sybille), her brothers Kester and little Carlos (Ellen's name for her brother) - they shared happy times, all those years ago. But a tragedy happens on her 12th birthday - it was such a horrible day, that Ellen has blocked most of it from her memory. It takes her decades to realize what really happened all those years ago. It takes her that long to come to terms with her past.

I highly recommend A Heart of Stone. The book held my attention the way a good mystery would. With details revealed in bits and pieces, I found myself wanting to spend all my time reading this book until I reached the end. A warning - this book is not for the faint of heart.

I have to admit that I was surprised by how much I _enjoyed_ this book. Ellen is certainly one of the richly textured main characters I can remember in recent fiction-- she never gives in to tragedy or melodrama, even as her mother descends into insanity following the birth of their family's youngest child. Each of the Van Bemmel children is given ample description and personality to make their loss all the more heart-wrenching.

This is one of those suspenseful books that starts in the aftermath and then takes the reader back through the events, leaving them to figure out why things happened the way they did. Dealing with insanity is a tough, tough job, but Dorrestein gives a chilling description of the mother's hallucinatory ravings about demonic possession, as well as an intimate picture of her husband's confusion at what is happening in his warm, close-knit family. Ellen, now in her thirties as she narrates, has trouble dealing with intimacy, as well as conflicting feelings about her own pregnancy, and as she slowly reveals her past like peeling the layers off an onion, one can hardly be surprised at her conflicted emotions.

Reading this book was something akin to driving past a car accident: I was horrified, but compelled to look. This book will haunt you long after you're finished.

In the past, Dorrestein wrote about the relationships between men and women, but her last novels focus on families and everything that can go wrong. In her stories, she creates a world of it's own, but it never becomes a non-realistic world. She has the talent to grab your throat and let you see the world as it sometimes really is, while avoiding to be too realistic to become 'a once and never again' story. Unnatural mothers is a novel that is an example of a life of a girl, and on teh other hand tells you something about your own reaction to that - and your own - life. Renate Dorrestein truly is an great storyteller.