- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Harpercollins; Reprint edition (May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060927399
- ISBN-13: 978-0060927394
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,680,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Sam, Lisa and Raph are orphaned as children and dispersed to different foster homes. They meet again as adults and find, on the surface, their lives have taken very different paths. This story is about love and memory and what happens to people who are blessed with neither.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
“All that’s left is the memory, and the memory’s not enough, the memory is one great longing.”
Twins Sam and Lisa and their older brother, Raph, are orphaned when their parents die in a car crash. Dispersed to various foster homes, they lose touch, re-uniting when the twins reach adulthood.
On the surface, all three have taken very different paths in life: Sam, sad and solitary, works as an archivist; Lisa is a painter, desperately unable to love her husband; and Raph, wild and resilient, always seeks the limit. What unite this strange, restless trio is their ever-present sense of what they lost when their parents died – a connectedness with their fellow men and the innocent, unconditional love of the family. Attempts to satiate their ‘great longing’ take all three on a journey back to the lost Paradise of childhood, where memory has become myth and hidden truths await discovery …
A bestselling novel and a masterpiece of European fiction, 'The Great Longing' has taken Holland by storm. Critically acclaimed and winner of the prestigious AKO prize, it has already established itself as one of the country’s great works of literature.
“Tremendous evocative power. I’ve been walking around for days now, reading and re-reading passages and wondering what it is about 'The Great Longing' that makes me feel so restless.”
ANTHONY MERTENS, 'De Groene Amsterdammer'
“A painfully beautiful book.”
UTRECHTS NIEUWSBLAD
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Haunting and beautiful. A book not just to be read but savoured. Marcel Moring has a unique, gentle touch in his work which seems lacking in so much today.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant
25 April 1999
Format:Paperback
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.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Fantastic literary work by a great Dutch talent!
30 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
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.
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