The Garden where the Brass Band PlayedQuartet, 1992 - 312 pages The book is a coming-of-age novel, something that in other languages is expressed more pointedly as the novel of education. Nol, "the judge's son, ' is the person whose moral sentiments are being educated. But that education is acquired at the expense of an infinitely more valuable person, the young woman Nol loves, who has been exploited by men of weight and standing in their provincial community-all of them human, disgracefully human. Not tells the story from the time he was five years old, when, inspired by a rendition of one of Souza's marches in the garden where the brass band played, he danced with the conductor's daughter, taller and older than himself, before a bemused assemblage of adults. The web of incident and reflection in Nol's narration astonishes the reader with the texture of the lives it evokes, ending with Nol's small, crucial defection that precipitates tragedy. In The Garden Where the Brass Band Played, as with every real novel of the genre, it is the reader whose sentiments are educated, by the pain of it, and no doubt rather too late |
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afternoon Alice de Rato Arnošt Lustig asked aunt bandstand better Bizet brass Brass Band brass instruments Carmen Caspers chair Chris Cuperus's danced Dijkhuizen door drink drunk éclairs Escamillo everything eyes face father feel felt fingers front Garden gave girl glass Grazia Deledda guilders half hand happened head hear heard hour Jeannetje José Julien Green kissed knew later laughing lessons listen looked married Mevrouw Mijnheer Vellinga morning coat mother moustache never night nodded nose once opera Ordelio Pär Lagerkvist past peppermint perhaps piano pince-nez played remember restaurant Richard Wagner Rieske shouting side SIMON VESTDIJK singing sitting smile someone sort standing staring Stegeman Stig Dagerman stood stop street sure talk Tannhäuser tell thing thought told took toreador Trix Cuperus Trix's Vestdijk voice waiter waiting walked watching woman young Tjallingii