Saturday, May 26, 2012

The Blue Door- Andre' P. Brink

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Pages: 122
Published: September 25th 2007 by Harvill Secker
Format: Hardback
Acquired: Non-Local Library
Date Finished: 27th May 2012

Synopsis:
What if . . . ?

The Blue Door is built around one of the oldest questions in storytelling: What if...? What if I returned home one day to find, behind a familiar door, an unfamiliar world? What if the people closest to me turned out to be strangers? What if strangers started claiming a place in my life I couldn’t imagine? What if the memories of the most important moments in my life can no longer be trusted? What if I am not who I think I am?

David le Roux, a teacher recently turned full-time artist, returns to his studio one afternoon to find his whole familiar world turned upside down. The woman who opens the door and welcomes him as her husband is a complete stranger to him: beautiful and loving, but not the wife he assumes he has been married to for nine years. The children are overjoyed at his return, but he has never set eyes on them before. And when he goes back to the building he believes he lives in, it no longer exists. Has everything in his life been an illusion? Or is the past real and only the present a hallucination? In a country like South Africa these questions may decide a whole life.

Instead of living with the consequences of early choices, he now discovers that behind every choice made lurks the possibility of innumerable other choices not made.

My Thoughts:
What to say about this short novella? I am struggling to share my thoughts, but what I can say with honesty is that I felt like I was on one massive trip while reading The Blue Door and I know that the story itself was supposed to be this dark, eccentric  and provocative read, but all I could think while reading it was – yes this was certainly written by a man [due to the subtle eroticism] and did the author intend for this to be such a mind-fuck because let me tell you however fascinating the entire book was it really did my head in.

The Blue door certainly is not my preferred style of literature, but I did enjoy reading it. The dark undertones gave the whole story this clouded atmosphere that was almost haunting. It begged to ask questions that were not answered, and it dared to go beyond anything I have ever read like this before. For the experience alone I would recommend it, but if weird and obscure is not your thing than I would advise against reading it unless you want a migraine.

I am giving this : 

★★★
3 Blue Door Knobs.

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