A witty second from Merijn de Boer

Fiction | Rolling stones | Merijn de Boer | Querido, €21.99 | 192 pages.

Ole Bakker, the protagonist of Merijn de Boer’s new novel Rolling stones, is willing to be the number two so that his girlfriend can pursue her career. But that turns out to be easier said than done.

‘If I were asked, “What do you want to achieve in life?”, I would answer, truthfully and with satisfaction: “Nothing.” Ole Bakker, the first-person narrator of Rolling stones, decides at an early age that he wants to organise his life in such a way that he can spend most of his time reading, watching films, playing table tennis and spending time with friends. In Amsterdam, he manages this perfectly well, with simple jobs that don’t demand too much time or energy. It’s at one of these jobs that he meets Daniëlle, and they fall head over heels in love. Now he is absolutely certain that he wants to follow the example of a romantic character from a Turgenev novel, who believes that the purpose of life is to make yourself second best.

When Daantje gets a job in Tunisia, everything seems to be going swimmingly: she can build a career, and as an expat husband, all he has to do is run the household, do the shopping and cook; he has the rest of the day to himself. The other Dutch diplomats’ husbands that Ole meets all seem to have settled into their roles perfectly and are happy to share their best household tips with Ole at their weekly pizza lunch and partners’ get-together.

As strong as, for example, the award-winning The Solidarity Group (2020) is Rolling stones No, but the new novel by Merijn de Boer – who himself lived in New York, Jerusalem and Tunis as a diplomat’s husband – is certainly witty. Take, for instance, the endless conversations his characters have about cleaning products, kitchen roll, loading the dishwasher and other utterly tedious domestic matters. And their coquettish little phrase: ‘Nothing beats a Dutch boterham’.

But whilst they, like ‘rolling stones’, have shaken off the ‘moss’ of the past – their old lives – Ole is increasingly overcome by homesickness for Amsterdam and a life with a little more substance.

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