I couldnt make up my mind, whether to like it or not. There is no way in between for this book. I had to read it for school (I'm Dutch). It is a very easy book and it doesnt show up with things that seem meaningless, but appear to have loads of other meanings to it. If you like to read about the beginning of the 20th century, this is a book to read, easy and quite ok. I didnt like the extreme simpleness of it. It is very regular, a boy loves a girl, they date but it doesnt work out. I also don't think it is really giving more information on the Dutch situation in that time. It was written in 1949, so that is a bit later. Vestdijk may have lived in that time as a little kid himself. If I would really choose to read a book, it would never be this kind of book. It is written in a very romantic style. Knowing that Vestdijk was a shrink himself, it is also very psychologically written. Knowing that he never skipped in his books one can find some faults in it too (the translated version is probably filtered). This Vestdijk had some weird manners as well, maybe that explains some details. I would only recommend it to people who have special interests in that time and in weird love-affairs.

This novel is regarded as one of Dutch writer Simon Vestdijk's best novels ever. Well, there are a couple of arguments supporting this view. The novel is beautifully written and the story is carefully created. Vestdijk transforms his memories of his own youth into the memories that everybode can identify with. The original title De Koperen Tuin, which means The Garden of Copper, gives even more meaning to the story and the way memory and the past play their different roles in the novel. This book is brilliant and everybody should at least try to read it!

"Whereas The Garden where the Brass Band Played is `merely' one of the finest love stories written in this century, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most beautiful novels ever written." With this quotation in mind,one should seek out this fine Dutch novel about the love affair between a young man of the upper middle class and the daughter of a failing music teacher.