The Book Club

Thirty-year-old Theresa Pellikaan is typical of the wealthy middle classes - with her respectable background, successful husband and house in an apparently sleepy, yet powerful, rich village. She works in a gallery, also typical of her type. When her former schoolmate Ruth Ackermann, brought up in the same village, makes waves with an international bestseller, but none of the villagers ever mention her achievement, not even the literary circle of Theresa's father, famous civil rights scholar Randolf Pellikaan, Theresa begins to wonder why. It can't only be because it's not 'literature'. It emerges that there is a dark secret in the village. Every member of the book club has a reason to keep quiet and Ruth Ackerman's novel threatens to bring the past into the present, with devastating results. Unable to cope with the silence, Theresa investigates, no matter the consequences.

A village book club’s boycott of an internationally best-selling novel by a hometown author uncovers a local secret and reveals a national incident of deceit and deception in the Netherlands. “Sooner or later every person with a sense of responsibility joins a book club,” contends famous constitutional lawyer Randalf Pellikaan in recruiting his son-in-law, politically influential John Vos. Yet when Teresa Pellikaan, Randalf’s daughter and John’s wife, suggests that the club read the book written by her former classmate Ruth Ackermann, based on Ruth’s confinement in a psychiatric institution, the recommendation is met with silence. Only gradually, with the help of fellow classmate and journalist Victor Herwig, does Teresa learn why Ruth’s father got sacked and her mother threw herself in front of a train, leading to Ruth’s institutionalization, as well as the role Randalf Pellikaan played in this drama. Based on an actual episode in the recent history of the Netherlands that led to multiple deaths in Haiti, this is a social critique by a Dutch author that is likely to resonate most in her home country. --Michele Leber