Edward van de Vendel
The Days Of Bluegrass Love (De dagen van bluegrassliefde)
The book is situated successively in a provincial town in the Netherlands, a summer camp in Knoxville, USA, and a town in Norway, is about the budding identities of two boys. In order to discover who he is and what he is capable of, after his final exams, Tycho who had an extremely sheltered upbringing, leaves for a year at an American summer camp.
At Amsterdam Schiphol Airport he meets Oliver, a passionate footballer, who is on his way to the same camp. Although they hardly realise it themselves, after a six and a half hour flight a close and passionate relationship has been formed between the pair. It soon becomes obvious, however, that there is no place for juvenile homosexuality in the camp’s views on friendship. When the outside world discovers that the two junior assistants are more than just friends they are sent home in disgrace. They fly to Norway. There, Tycho discovers that football is more important to Oliver than their relationship. Oliver is in love with Tycho, but cannot see himself as being gay. Tycho’s confusion, the physical contact and the macho world of football are depicted just as clearly and convincingly as the society’s hypocrisy regarding homosexuals. There is plenty to read between the lines. The cutting dialogue, in short and strongly contrasting scenes, makes one boy’s search for his own identity more than just a literary experience.
Publisher
Querido
Singel 262
NL - 1016 AC Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 551 12 62
FAX +31 20 639 19 68
E-mail: rights@querido.nl
Website: www.querido.nl
Publishing details
De dagen van bluegrassliefde (1999, 148 pp)
Biography
Edward van de Vendel (b. 1964) has rapidly developed into an all-round writer for children and teenagers. He once set up his own primary school, but opted in the end for writing, which was better suited to his idealism and talent. After two collections of children’s poetry, he broke through in 1999 with the poetic adaptation of Gijsbrecht, based on the seventeenth-century Dutch classic, for which he was awarded the prestigious Gouden Zoen. He received this award again a year later for his totally different, pioneering adolescent novel De dagen van de Bluegrassliefde (The Days of Blue Grass Love). He also won a Silver Slate award for the picture book Dom konijn (Silly Rabbit). An all-rounder with almost twenty books to his name, both prose and poetry for children and young people of varying ages. The social awareness that he shows in De gelukvinder (The Boy Who Found Happiness, 2008) is a new development and one that is to be welcomed.
Website: www.edwardvandevendel.com
Quotes
Even in his prose, Van de Vendel succeeds in voicing the almost unmentionable (…) poetic talent is clearly not restricted to one particular genre.
De Volkskrant