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Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (Life Writing), by Carolyne Van Der Meer
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Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience is Carolyne Van Der Meer’s creative reinterpretation through short stories, poems, and essays of the experiences of her mother and other individuals who either spent their childhoods in Nazi-occupied Holland or were deeply affected by wartime in Holland. The book documents the author’s personal journey as she uncovers her mother’s past through their correspondence and discussion and through research in the Netherlands. Motherlode also considers mother–daughter relationships and the effect of wartime on motherhood.
Motherlode is not about recording precise historical data; rather, it attempts to recover and interpret the complex emotions of the individuals growing up in wartime. The book is based on interviews with the author’s mother and other Dutch Canadians, interviews with and letters from Canadian Jewish war veterans, and information provided by individuals with direct or indirect experience of the Dutch Resistance. The creative pieces explore onderduik (going into/being in hiding), life in an occupied country, the work of the Dutch Resistance, liberation, collective and individual cultural memory, and the way in which wartime childhoods shaped adulthood for these individuals.
- Sales Rank: #3446733 in Books
- Published on: 2013-12-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .50" w x 6.00" l, .49 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 146 pages
Review
“Motherlode is Carolyne Van Der Meer’s Orphic journey to reclaim the past of her mother, a child during the five years of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The mosaic of poetry, fiction, and reminiscence is her Dodenherdenking, a remembrance of the dead, but also her immersion in the Lake of Memory. Her quest to understand a loved one expresses the need of every child and every parent to know and to be remembered. If the past is a foreign country, Van Der Meer shows us that with empathy and imagination we can enter that land as more than mere tourists.” (Steven Manners, author of Ondine’s Curse and Valley of Fire)
“A mesmerizing journey through occupied wartime Netherlands; the voices emerging from the pages are haunting: replete with powerful emotions and modernity.” (Isabelle Lafl�che, author of J’adore New York and J’adore Paris)
About the Author
Carolyne Van Der Meer is a journalist, public relations professional, and university lecturer. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Literature from the University of Ottawa and Concordia University, respectively, and has a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers. She has published journalistic articles, essays, short stories, and poems in publications in Canada and internationally.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A Mother?Child View of War
By Susan Drees
Motherlode is the author's tribute/recreation/reclamation of her mother and other Dutch people's past, those who lived as children, parents, resistors during the German occupation of Holland in WWII. It also is a way for the author to connect with a part of her heritage. Van Der Meer tells the story through memories captured from her mother and other Dutch emigrants to Canada, through poetry, short stories, through observations she makes during a trip to the Netherlands in 2010.
The strength, for me, lay in the recollections of the Dutch survivors whether they still reside in Holland or, like the author's mother, are long-time residents of Canada. These are often chilling, sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking. Less successful for me was the framing device, the author's own story, her linking of herself to a search for her roots. It felt a bit forced though it did feel sincere. Her travels to present day Netherlands were interesting and revealing for the contrasts brought out and the discoveries she made in both people and places, the concrete discoveries she made more than the emotional links she appeared to be looking for.
Once again, this is an interesting look at a chapter of WWII that is new to me, the German occupation of Holland, and through Dutch eyes, most of whom were children at the time. I think it offers some valuable insights about memory; what it means to be a child, friend or neighbor in wartime; to resist, to shelter others at the risk of one's own family. It makes me wonder -- would I have the strength?
An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley for the purpose of review.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A Remarkable Book
By Michael Farry
"Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience" by Carolyne Van Der Meer is a remarkable book. It deals with many things, the experience of the Dutch living under German occupation during World War II, European migration to North America, mother – daughter relationships, seeking ones roots, travel, memory, and many more. It is not “about” any of these but a skillful and delicate working out of strands of these themes in a fresh imaginative way.
The writing is light, careful, and allows the reader space and time to engage with the different narratives and characters.
An adult child is interested even fascinated by her mother’s experience in wartime Holland. The process of drawing out information from her mother is difficult and delicate and very carefully recorded. Even talking about this past can be difficult for the mother - “like the sting of pulling off a well stuck band aid”. Subtle nuances of intimacy are hinted at, during a telephone conversation the daughter hears “a smile come down the line”.
The mixing of diary entries, direct narrative, discussion, poetry and short stories works very well. The book is carefully constructed in a way which suggests the non-linear reality of life and memory, the way we jump from the present to a memory, remember a poem or a song or a person from the past.
The poems and stories have a deceptive simplicity.
When I started school
there were air raids.
At times as the reader is drawn into the details of daily life it comes as a shock to realize that these events are taking place amid the cataclysm of a world war. These poems and stories allow us, the readers, to stand back and wonder.
And the whole book makes us think about where we come from, who we are, where we belong. Where is our true north? to use the Nancy Huston phrase discussed by the author. And indeed another pleasure of this work is the fact that the author shares with us the process of its making. That too is part of the journey she and we take together.
There is no preaching here, no certainty, no dogma only great empathy and understanding. In the end what is it “about”? It is about relationships: parent-child, mother-daughter, old world-new world, occupier-occupied, writer-subject, writer-reader. In the end it is about our place in the world.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Admirable but...
By Christopher Sullivan
The author’s reasons for writing the book are understandable and admirable. At the centre of the book is a great idea waiting to be written. But this is not that book. I’m afraid to say that the writing of the book is poorly executed.
I hate to write anything bad about a laudable attempt to write a book on the subject of her families’ experiences during the German occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War. However, I always believe in writing an honest review.
I will start with the poetry. It is of a freeform style that is both turgid and generic. It adds nothing to the book’s worth. In fact it is a distraction from the stories told within the book.
The stories are rather leaden, clich�d and are in need of a good editor. The book is grammatically and artistically poor as is the book’s style of writing. The use of language, analogies and phraseology is at times puzzling and unwieldy.
When the author writes of her mother’s memories of the war she states that, “these are terrifying memories…she (the author’s mother) has blocked them out. However, within the same paragraph the author describes the above as “like the sting of pulling off a well stuck band Aid”.
Later when the writer is talking to her mother on the phone she writes, “And I hear a smile come down the line”. How does one ‘hear’ a smile? Don’t get me started on the author’s misuse of conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence that are scattered through the book.
The author also strangely misuses phrases that result in a sentence making no sense, “It’s like you’re in a vacuum, the time –space continuum interrupted, a chunk that’s forever out of reach. The time-space continuum is a mathematical model. It is the joining of three dimensional space with one dimensional time.
The author then mentions on the next page when talking of “travelling is lonely. Like you’ve lost the connection with what you know and love” that “There’s no frame of reference”. But of course there is a frame of reference. I’m sure the author has travelled before or been lonely before or felt lost before etc. All these would be within her ‘frame of reference’.
Apart from the misuse and inaccurate use of the above terms (and there are many more) the main problem is that they act as a distraction. The incongruous phrases also devalue the aesthetic quality of the story.
Sadly, there are many problems with the book and these also include inaccurate information. Firstly, the author states that her mother as a little girl talks to an ordinary German Soldier dressed in black. Lower ranked army German soldiers dressed in a greenish-grey uniform. The author also has her Dutch antecedents referring to the Germans as ‘Jerries’. This was a slang term for the Germans used by the British. The people of the Netherlands would have referred to the Germans as either ‘Mofs’ or Poeps’.
I was also surprised by the lack of planning the author made when visiting the Netherlands as research for her book. She writes as if she simply wandered around aimlessly with no planned itinerary. For example, she writes, “(I) stumble upon the Netherlands Institute for War.” Surely as a journalist visiting the country she is planning to write about should have a planned itinerary rather than just ‘stumbling’ around.
There is a seed of an interesting story buried within the book but has been halted from growing into a fully formed mature idea by poor, stiff, awkward writing.
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