Book

Nicolette Smabers

Chinese in Glass

A book full of clarity and suggestion

Stopping to look at the ordinary things in life, that is the typical attitude of the main characters in all three of Nicolette Smabers’s books to date. The female narrator attempts to define her childhood as an Indonesian and a Catholic living in The Hague. Yet the more accurate her description becomes, the more puzzling it seems to appear. Like the marbles which Edith Persoon takes with her after visiting her Aunt Dora in Chinezen van glas: the multicoloured signs inside are Chinese characters - says Edith - which have to be read under a magnifying glass.

In this novella the focus is mainly on the Indonesian side of the family. Edith, the main character, is confused; she has no place in history. She does not know what social group she belongs to, whether she is rich or poor, really or only nominally Catholic, and how Indonesian? This lack of a personal history, having to say that there is nothing to tell, is what the book is essentially all about. Smabers manages to express this by creating clear images to tell the actual story. This book comprises a string of images appearing as museum pieces behind glass, inaccessible. The death of the half-Indonesian father who refuses to talk about the past (perhaps because, as Edith discovers, he once had an affair with Aunt Dora and her son Carel might actually be his child) is described by Smabers as follows: “Six years later the doors were opened for us. It was as if our lives had been packed up tight all those years, vacuum packed, like coffee. Father’s death cut it open and all the contents surrendered with a sigh to the air from outside.” By describing the situation in this way Smabers avoids having to discuss those six years or getting bogged down in details. It is the precise use of language which gives the main character in Chinezen van glas something to hold on to. The fact that the father’s secretive silence might be nothing more than a screen for an everyday extra-marital affair and that Edith’s sister Mart later has a baby that may be cousin Carel’s child are disillusionments which never actually break the spell - meanwhile the delightful veil of illusion has provided a splendid show of linguistic skill.

This focus on the restrictions of a particular space is typical of Smabers’s work. It expresses the main character’s need for a sense of perspective, not to be in the centre of things but to be able to look at events from the outside. Everyday things become special, not because they are spectacular but because they are set apart. That makes this short novel fascinating literature.

All her books, including the recently published Chinezen van glas, possess an imposing intimacy, a feeling for detail regarding surroundings and relationships which few writers can match.

Trouw

Nicolette Smabers’s miniatures in Chinezen van glas reach from the author’s adulthood to her childhood but without changing the pace with which they are written. She writes with a magnifying glass so that even the smallest domestic details are enlarged into major events. She conjures up the comfortable, the strange and the embarrassing, all with great effect.

Vrij Nederland

Nicolette Smabers has once again produced a book full of clarity and suggestion. Chinezen van glas is concrete without being overly forceful, a remarkable achievement.

HP/De Tijd

Nicolette Smabers

Nicolette Smabers (b. 1948) wrote her debut, a well-received collection of short stories entitled De Franse tuin (‘The French Garden’), in 1983. She followed this with the novellas Portret van mijn engel (‘Portrait of my Angel’, 1987) and Chinezen van glas (‘Chinese in Glass’, 1991)…

lees meer

Details

Chinezen van glas (1991). Fiction, 111 pages.

Please contact the author for translation rights: [email protected]

Sample translation

English (PDF document)