{"id":4549,"date":"2016-08-17T15:20:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T15:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/?p=4549"},"modified":"2016-08-17T15:20:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T15:20:01","slug":"book-review-eline-vere-by-couperus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/book-review-eline-vere-by-couperus\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Eline Vere by Couperus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My latest Dutch read is\u00a0<em>Eline Vere<\/em> by Louis Couperus. The novel was published in the late 1800s in a newspaper before being printed as one novel.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4551\" style=\"width: 196px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft post-item__attachment\"><a href=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/9o3fLS\" aria-label=\"5500256978 194c712194 M\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4551\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4551\"  alt=\"Photo by Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen found in Flicker.com\" width=\"186\" height=\"240\" \/ src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2016\/08\/5500256978_194c712194_m.jpg\"><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4551\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen found in Flicker.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When I started reading this novel, I had big hopes because the book jacket compared it to Flaubert&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Madame Bovary<\/em> and Couperus was compared to the great masters of the 19th century. I approached the novel with hope but with respect. I didn&#8217;t know if it would be an easy read or those books you love, but require great care.<\/p>\n<p>To my surprise,\u00a0<em>Eline Vere<\/em> is a novel that reads itself. I found myself reading and reading, I was captivated by Eline and her sister Betsy. Their problems seemed so silly and obvious, yet so dramatic and impossible to resolve in their eyes. Eline is definitely a character that will stick with him, like Madame Bovary did many years ago.<\/p>\n<p>The plot is explained nicely in the following video. SPOILER ALERT!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Samenvatting Eline Vere (De Alphaman)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gV7U6_PYA88?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But behind the love story and Eline&#8217;s depression and anxiety, Couperus is compared to Tolstoy and Zola because the story is much more than just about love. What Couperus does in this novel is a very clear and thorough criticism of the high society of The Hague. With every page and every social gathering, Couperus is giving us a time-machine that allows us to observe and judge for ourselves what life was like.<\/p>\n<p>For those interested in the novel AND practicing listening comprehension or pronunciation, I found video recordings of each chapter of the novel. You can listen to chapter 1 in this video:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"01   Hoofdstuk 1   Eline Vere   Louis Couperus\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/naV3qvjXq-o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Which Dutch or Belgian novels would you recommend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"186\" height=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2016\/08\/5500256978_194c712194_m.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p>My latest Dutch read is\u00a0Eline Vere by Louis Couperus. The novel was published in the late 1800s in a newspaper before being printed as one novel. When I started reading this novel, I had big hopes because the book jacket compared it to Flaubert&#8217;s\u00a0Madame Bovary and Couperus was compared to the great masters of the&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/book-review-eline-vere-by-couperus\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":4551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[60713],"tags":[358604,444977,444978,10149,209225,27762],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-2","tag-dutch-literature","tag-eline-vere","tag-louis-couperus","tag-netherlands","tag-realism","tag-the-hague"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4552,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions\/4552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}