The Blue House, a massive 1920s villa, has been empty since the widowed Mrs Lunius took her daughters back to Argentina shortly before the war. Now, some fifty years later, Felicia and Nina are back to spend a last summer in the house where they grew up before it is sold off to make way for retirement apartments. Their reappearance stirs up a lot of interest in the village, where a few people can still remember them. (The place sounds suspiciously like Aerdenhout, where Haasse's Dutch relatives lived before the war, but she has prudently mixed up the geography a bit to discourage us from treating the book as a roman à clef.) And, despite their reluctance to get too involved with the place, the presence of the sisters does become a trigger for an unforeseen tragedy. Or at least a mystery...

This seems to be a book about conformity and rebellion and the way they work themselves out in women's lives. The narrative voice alternates between a conventional omniscient narrator with privileged access to the thoughts of the four women at the centre of the story and a "we" narrator, a kind of Greek chorus, representing the collective, disapproving view of the village gossip-machine. And the four women are sorted carefully as well: Felicia and Nora have lived safe, conformist lives, taking careful control of how they are perceived in the world and waiting for the big moment when they can do the thing they really wanted to (although they may well have missed it already...); Nina and Wanda are rebels, constantly running against the walls and hurting themselves. Nina has done some good in the world despite all the obstacles - she has been a dancer and political activist in Argentina - but the author has condemned poor Wanda to a life of chasing illusions.

A very densely-written, short novel in which every fleeting reference and transitory image turns out to have been working hard for its living, and probably a book you can go back to many times to find different threads of meaning in it. And a rather bleak view of life.

(But also fun in a totally anachronistic way: it's hard to stop yourself thinking that a book which starts out with a dull, respectable Dutchman marrying a glamorous and unreliable Argentinian must have some kind of buried satirical message, even if it was written a couple of decades before the Dutch radio first broke out into orgies of bandoneon music...) ( )

Twee zussen groeien op in het Blauwe Huis. Ze hebben een Argentijnse moeder en een Nederlandse vader. Ze zijn heel verschillend. De een wordt diplomatenvrouw, de ander trouwt met een Argentijnse danser en ondervindt de junta in Argentinië aan den lijve. Als ze allebei weduwe zijn en al wat ouder, trekken ze voor een tijdje in het Blauwe Huis. Het wordt niet helemaal wat de oudste zus er van verwacht had. Zeker niet nadat zij de stiefzoon van haar zus heeft opgespoord en uitgenodigd eens langs te komen. Voor de nieuwsgierige buurvrouw heeft het zelfs fatale gevolgen.
Leuke vorm van commentaar van dorpsgenoten op de gebeurtenissen in het Blauwe Huis (tweede persoon meervoud) en het in de derde persoon enkelvoud vertelde verhaal.

Zwei Schwestern kehren nach langen Jahren der Abwesenheit zurück in das Haus ihrer Kindheit. Sie sind sich fremd geworden. Doch während sich die beiden kaum noch etwas zu sagen haben, beeinflussen sie das Leben von zwei jungen Frauen in der Nachbarschaft auf fatale Weise.
Quelle: Amazon.de ( )