Word: dorrestein
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There are childhood traumas--and then there is what happened to Ellen van Bemmel in Renate Dorrestein's stunning novel A Heart of Stone (Viking; 244 pages; $23.95), translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans. In the early '70s, in a quiet suburb of Haarlem, Ellen's psychotic mother killed three of her five children, her husband and herself. Believing she was saving her loved ones from evil, Margreet van Bemmel fed them tranquilizers and put bags over their heads. Ellen and a young brother escaped by hiding in the cellar...
...Dorrestein shifts flawlessly between past and present, patiently building impact and suspense with scenes of domestic harmony and madness in the making. The household bubbled with high jinks, connubial heat and mutual affection. Mr. Van Bemmel ran a home-based clipping service specializing in American news and culture. As Ellen describes it, "You'd find clippings in the most unlikely places, where someone had dropped them for a moment because the phone was ringing or because someone was at the door." Facts and trivia were in the air, and Ellen absorbed them, from the latest about Vietnam ("We were...
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