As is blindingly obvious after just a quick look at the Ramblings, my reading is very random and often totally mood driven, as well as being affected by outside forces! And today the book I’m sharing my thoughts on is one I hadn’t particularly intended to pick up at this time; however, a chance mention of it by Nicholas Royle in his excellent “Shadow Lines” reminded me that I had come by a copy on my visit to Edinburgh last autumn. The book is “The Following Story” by Cees Nooteboom, translated here by Ina Rilke, and it’s a remarkable read.

Nooteboom is a prize-winning Dutch author, and this 99 page novella was first published in 1991. I’ve not read the author before, but it was the premise which grabbed my attention from the start (as well as the Harvill logo on the spine!) and the nudge from Royle was all I needed. The book is narrated by Herman Mussert, a Dutch teacher of the classics; he goes to bed in Amsterdam and wakes up in a bed in a hotel in Lisbon, and strangely enough it’s the very same hotel in which he stayed 20 years earlier when he was having an affair with another man’s wife. How is this possible??? Despite his confusion, the staff show no surprise at his being there, and although he keeps having visions of himself in bed in Amsterdam, he explores the city of Lisbon and goes back to the places he knows from his earlier visit.

As he wanders, Mussert thinks back to the events which led up to his original trip to Lisbon, his affair with a colleague, the triggers for this and an outstanding pupil who may have been something of a catalyst. As we learn about Mussert’s life, it seems he’s struggling to reconcile past and present, as well as working out who he really is. The second part of the novella sees Mussert embarking on a sea voyage along with a random collection of fellow travellers. Quite where he’s going and why will eventually be revealed, but all that’s clear is that nothing is what it seems.

Mirrors are useless, they retain nothing, not the living and not the dead, they are mercenary perjurers, nauseating in their glassy deference.

And frankly, no more than this can be said without revealing spoilers and I don’t want to do that! I went into the book cold myself and am so glad I did so, as I had no idea what was going to happen and the end knocked me for six. Nooteboom’s prose is elegant and often lyrical, conjuring dream like scenarios and gradually revealing all as the story progresses; and much of the joy is in not knowing what’s going to happen. Mussert himself is an unprepossessing character, defined perhaps by his love of the ancient classics, and his one passionate affair. His unexpected transposition to another place allows him to look back on his life, the highs and lows, and try to make sense of what happened to him. He slips back and forth in time during his narration, blurring the borders between now and then, and the voyage in the second section has a wonderfully dreamlike quality.

“The Following Story” turned out to be an unexpectedly powerful read, with one of those gut-punching endings you don’t necessarily see coming. I’ve seen his work compared to Proust and Perec, which is perhaps a little wide of the mark in my opinion. On the evidence of “Story” he has a singular voice of his own, and a remarkably clever way of telling a tale. Despite its short length the book’s really lodged in my mind, and I won’t forget the narrator and his story in a hurry. And if this is typical of Nooteboom’s work, I definitely want to read more. I see that the book cost me £2.50 from the Shelter Scotland charity bookshop, and it’s frankly worth every penny – highly recommended! 😀