{"id":139359,"date":"2026-09-27T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/?p=139359"},"modified":"2026-09-17T13:55:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:55:06","slug":"geestige-tweede-van-merijn-de-boer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2026\/09\/geestige-tweede-van-merijn-de-boer\/","title":{"rendered":"A witty second from Merijn de Boer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fiction | <strong>Rolling stones<\/strong> | Merijn de Boer | Querido, \u20ac21.99 | 192 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ole Bakker, the protagonist of Merijn de Boer\u2019s new novel <em>Rolling stones<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2018If I were asked, \u201cWhat do you want to achieve in life?\u201d, I would answer, truthfully and with satisfaction: \u201cNothing.\u201d Ole Bakker, the first-person narrator of <em>Rolling stones<\/em>, 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\u2019t demand too much time or energy. It\u2019s at one of these jobs that he meets Dani\u00eblle, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019 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\u2019 get-together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As strong as, for example, the award-winning <em>The Solidarity Group<\/em> (2020) is <em>Rolling stones<\/em> No, but the new novel by Merijn de Boer \u2013 who himself lived in New York, Jerusalem and Tunis as a diplomat\u2019s husband \u2013 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: \u2018Nothing beats a Dutch boterham\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But whilst they, like \u2018rolling stones\u2019, have shaken off the \u2018moss\u2019 of the past \u2013 their old lives \u2013 Ole is increasingly overcome by homesickness for Amsterdam and a life with a little more substance.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fictie | Rollende stenen | Merijn de Boer | Querido, \u20ac 21,99 | 192 blz. Ole Bakker, de hoofdpersoon van Merijn de Boers nieuwe roman Rollende stenen, wil grootmoedig de nummer 2 zijn, zodat zijn vriendin carri\u00e8re kan maken. Maar dat blijkt makkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. \u2018Als mij werd gevraagd : \u201cWat wil je bereiken [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4763,11687],"tags":[15632,58],"class_list":["post-139359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literatuur-2","category-donatie-gevraagd","tag-expat","tag-recensie"],"featured_image_url":[],"post_author":"Vivian de Gier","assigned_categories":"LITERAIR, WAARDEER &amp; DONEER!","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":139557,"url":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2026\/09\/het-rapportcijfer-7-en-de-zes-meldingen-als-de-toezichthouder-te-laat-meet\/","url_meta":{"origin":139359,"position":0},"title":"A mark of 7 and the six reports \u2013 When the regulator takes too long to carry out checks","author":"Guido van Nispen","date":"19 September 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"A score of 7 for social safety, yet at the same time six reports and thirty staff leaving. The Stimuleringsfonds is not the first such case. Why do regulators only ever take notice when the press gets involved or the problem has become too big?","rel":"","context":"In &quot;beleid&quot;","block_context":{"text":"beleid","link":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/genre\/beleid\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":142856,"url":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2026\/10\/maarten-liebregts-wint-charlotte-kohler-stipendium-2026\/","url_meta":{"origin":139359,"position":1},"title":"Maarten Liebregts wins the 2026 Charlotte K\u00f6hler Scholarship","author":"Auteursbond","date":"26 October 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The Charlotte K\u00f6hler Scholarship, an award to encourage literary talent, has been awarded this year to Maarten Liebregts, a translator of Japanese literature. The jury praised both the diversity of Liebregts\u2019 translations and his remarkable talent for rendering natural Japanese conversations just as naturally in Dutch. The award ceremony\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;LITERAIR&quot;","block_context":{"text":"LITERAIR","link":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/genre\/literatuur-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3yKke-AfJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139363,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139359\/revisions\/139363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}