Erik Vlaminck
Candy Floss (Suikerspin)
Fascinating epic of fairground life
In Suikerspin (Candy Floss), the impressive new novel by Erik Vlaminck, Jean-Baptist Van Hooylandt travels from fair to fair in the early twentieth century with his collection of live human curiosities. His most astonishing act is a ‘derodyme’, female Siamese twins, the refined Joséphine and the apathetic Anastasia. Fortunately, Anna, the owner of another fairground attraction, concerned about the twins, is often around to look after them. Even so, they die in dramatic circumstances in 1912. Anna then mothers Jean-Baptist’s son Albert.
Albert’s son Arthur, embittered and marginalised, sees the income from a roundabout which he inherited from his father, vanish as he attempts by foul means to keep up with fairground developments. He is a dogged reactionary, a failed opportunist and a hypocritical misogynist, watching the world go to ruin. Suddenly a writer appears on the scene, looking for information on Arthur’s grandfather Jean-Baptist Van Hooylandt and on the circumstances surrounding the death of the Siamese twins. In a surprising dénouement, the writer discovers that Arthur is not Anna’s grandson, as everyone has always assumed, but the twins’.
This fascinating family epic of fairground life is filled with variety partly because much of what happens is told by Arthur, the grandson, in his particular comic idiom. Other characters in the novel tell different or incomplete, misleading versions of the same stories, thereby consistently wrong-footing the reader. And Vlaminck is able to present his own writing ironically through Arthur’s pessimistic outlook.
Vlaminck mixes fragments of past and present, the colour of fairground life, with archive material and fiction, reconstructing these in a sophisticated novel, which is riveting to read. The reader reconstitutes the family’s history as the novel progresses, and a few carefully inserted links in the story guide him or her to the brilliant conclusion. In Suikerspin Erik Vlaminck tells a family saga based on fact, set in an extraordinary world and replete with dark intrigue and sinister secrets.
The tone is controlled, the language authentic and laconic. A dramatic, penetrating read with much covert humour.
Publisher
Wereldbibliotheek
Spuistraat 283
NL - 1012 VR Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 638 18 99
FAX +31 20 638 44 91
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.wereldbibliotheek.nl
Publishing details
Suikerspin (2008, 286 pp)
Biography
Erik Vlaminck (b. 1954) writes autobiographically inspired prose and plays in which his experiences in psychiatric nursing and care for the homeless are incorporated. In 1992, the novel Quatertemperdagen (Ember Days) became the first in a six-part naturalistic family saga set partly in a village in Belgium and partly in Canada after the Second World War. The main character is a great-uncle whose unexpurgated stories stimulate the writer to delve into family secrets and long-concealed chronicles. The author himself also appears in the last part of Het schismatieke schrijven (Schismatic Writing, 2005), to explain his position and his intentions. Angélique (2003), a short story and stage monologue, is about a nun who was raped in the Congo who returns to Belgium, to miserable care. Erik Vlaminck teaches at the Writers’ Academy in Antwerp and chairs of the Association of Flemish Authors.
Quotes
The Flemish author Erik Vlaminck has never built cathedrals. This heir to Willem Elsschot erects beautiful small chapels in the Flemish countryside.
NRC Handelsblad
One of the greatest talents among the new generation of Flemish writers.
De Stem