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.

Nathan was a sniveling and pathetic character. His relationship with Nina was creepy and repulsive. My "creepy" has a negative connotation, as opposed to another reviewer's use of the word.

Marcus' menage et trois, however, was hot. Maybe if a story or five were left out I would have enjoyed the book more. Lots of unfinished business.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said "the universe is composed of stories - not atoms", and you can't escape that with this book. "In Babylon" is filled with stories pulling you along, stories strung together in an unconvential way, the effect more like a densely woven mat than a pretty necklace.

The theme is announced right on the dedication page: "Trees have roots. Jews have legs." Möring's protagonist, writer of fairy tales Nathan Hollander, tells the story of his family, Jews, always on the way, traveling West. It begins with the clockmaker Magnus Levie, from the area bordering Poland and Lithuania, who starts his trek to the West in 1648, after finding the house of his uncle Chaim burned down by Cossacks, his uncle presumably murdered. After twenty years of wandering he shows up in Holland, in what is its prosperous Golden Age, and finds a welcome there and a place to settle, and he assumes the name Hollander. The trek West is then interrupted for eight generations, all clockmakers in Rotterdam, physicists, engineers. Holland, poignantly characterized as the land of milk and butter, with its biblical echoes of "land overflowing of milk and honey", is almost the promised land, but not quite.

In 1939 Nathan's dad, mom and uncle Herman set ship to America, to escape Hitler and the "Teutonic hordes", without being able to convince their parents to come with them. What I admire in Möring's account of this history is that there is no trace of any attempt to evoke compassion, instead he leaves you with complete respect for how each of these people dealt with the circumstances they found themselves in.

What I consider to be the weakest part of the book is the backbone story, the story in which all the other stories find their connection. What will happen with Nathan and Nina, who find themselves stuck in an unusually severe winter in a remote house without heat, who need to keep alive by hacking antique furniture to pieces and burning it? Who had previously stacked that furniture tightly in the staircase well, and why? As the mystery that needs to pull you along suffiently to get you to read all the other stories it doesn't work very well - fortunately those other stories are strong enough and cohesive enough to do just fine without needing this central mystery.

Nathan has trouble settling anywhere, and to trust others. Möring draws this sharply and contrasts it with the life of Magnus who after his wanderings of twenty years is able to find a home in the world. Will Nathan eventually succeed in this too? Can he overcome his distrust? That is the central tension that keeps him going.

Nathan explains his personal inability to grow roots from the history of his family or that of Jews in general - and this is what keeps his inability in place. How Möring himself sees this is less clear to me.

Well worth reading, if only for his portrayal of Holland by a deliberate outsider. Dutch expatriates, like me, will be able to identify with that very well. And for a flavor of a history of ordinary Jews in a strange world, both bizarre and moving, Möring is an expert cook.

Dear Sir,

For this letter to make any amount of sense, it must be read as if you are, in fact, Marcel Möring. I'm not sure if you are, or if this email address is just an address to a webmaster of sorts. I feel an overpowering need to tell you how much I loved your book, In Babylon. In all honesty, I picked it up, a few years ago, simply because of it's cover. "Hey, what's this..." I said to it, as I spun it in my hands, the hardback edition is so beautiful, what with it's uneven pages jetting out like a collection of feathers. I have seen other countries editions, mine is with the greenish-gray background with the tower of books climbing upwards to a hovering pendulum. A pocket watch splayed open, displaying 3:16, rests, forgotten on a step of binding. A very handsome book indeed. Who says you can't judge such a thing by it's cover? The story packed within, beginning with the unsightly death of Uncle Herman alongside an all-too-young girl. To the Hollander home, haunted by objects and memories, cluttered with books and canned food and cold as death, trapped by snow and time itself, sabotaged by ghosts and memories of them. To Adolf Hitler screeching through the speaker of an old radio

"There was a horrible noise coming through the radio. It sounded as if there was a kobold inside, a small, hideous creature hopping up and down on skinny little legs, steaming with rage. Every few minutes the voice coming from the Comedia would reach a shrill crescendo and the gnome would bite off the words that rolled out of his mouth. As if he were spewing out a long string of sausages and every so often, ranting and raving, would snap one off."

To America. New York. New Mexico. Back to Europe, across all of it and time as well. Back to Holland, back to that frozen house where time stands still until it bursts again. Sending the narrator, Nathan, on a dizzying hunt to find the origins of everything that is Hollander, everything that is him. The characters you've created, sultry Nina with her fire-like hair, her fire-like wit. The mythical Zeno with his oversized enigma and undersized stature. The elusive Magnus, hiding from his own memory, which in turn fuels Nathan's. Such and array. And the food you describe excites me. I am a chef, and hearing Nathan concoct what he could, with what he was given and the description and selection of wine sent shivers of delight up my spine. Stories packed within stories telling stories themselves in just the way they are strung together, what connects them to eachother, and even, as is the case with the Fairy Tales, what keeps them seemingly apart. You ought to know you have written my all time favorite book, one which I have already purchased as gifts for others and talked more than a few into buying themselves, always the handsome hardback, I insist. And I wonder, repeatedly, how different it might be in Dutch, I wonder if I would like it more or less, I wonder how it sounds to you in English and how it might sound to me if I could learn Dutch. Your work, translated by the very talented Stacey Knecht, into my tongue, rattles off with pace, with meter, like a stanza in Latin. I've rarely felt a book speak itself so precisely before. When poor Nina, trapped outside, every cell frozen, recovers, slightly, you wrote: "Cold. I. Thought. I. Was. Going. To. Die." spoken through her thawing jaw. I read it as if I too was frozen. Then, Nathan's newly devised bedtime ritual, "BookGlassCandleabraAlkaSeltzerFlask" speaks, still cold, but a fast paced coldness, unlike Ninas' slow plotted blurts.

What a remarkable novel you have written, I used to try to write, until I read yours, then I learned I could never write like that. Like you. And, seeing how that is how I would like to write, I have quietly stopped. Your writing is extraordinary. The best I have ever seen.

I live in America, in San Francisco, and have had the hardest possible time finding your earlier work The Great Longing, for it had been unavailable in both hard and soft back editions for some time. I finally found a used copy last week, and as soon as I am done with the book I am reading (by another Dutch author, Cees Nooteboom) I will happily begin yours. If you are indeed Marcel Möring, and you do indeed read this, and you feel like replying, may I ask what other novels you'd recommend to someone who loved yours. Keeping in mind that I only read English. And, will you continue to have your work translated into English?

Whoever you are, if you are he, thank you for writing what you have written, and I eagerly anticipate more in the years to come. Mark Fantino

It's the 1960s. David Speijir, 12 years old, is living at home with his parents in the Netherlands. David's first love is cooking. His father is a former pilot; his mother a nurse. With money tight, the entire family begins assembling model airplanes for sale. While David is aware of the growing tension between his parents, he is powerless to prevent it, powerless to avert the bitterly stormy coastal night when it all comes apart.

THE DREAM ROOM isn't an easy novel to understand. It's hardly more than a hundred pages long and the author, Moring, employs a minimalist style, telling much of the story without using words. The ambiguous ending, set years later in the 1990s, raises as many questions as it answers. I came away from the book uncertain, confused, not sure whether my desire for resolution was simply a failure on my part to understand what Moring had created, or a failure on his part to properly create it. My overall impression is of a coming-of-age story, a tale that uses the enigmatic to highlight how seldom life turns out the way we expect. And perhaps also the story's theme is about our dreams, about the way they affect us without our even knowing it.

Because I didn't fully understand THE DREAM ROOM, I was at a loss to rate it. I finally settled on four stars because the novel was well written enough that I was bothered by the perplexity. Had it been a failure, I would not have given it a second thought.