The press about Dutch Fado (Hollandse fado)
The Dutch press about Hollandse fado‘A book like this could easily become something like a pamphlet, but with Kriek nothing of the sort happens. His style is impassioned, nowhere moralising, and the poignantly present background has a beautiful counterpart in the daily worries of Koos Huizing.’
–Haarlems Dagblad (28-3-2000)
‘Above all the atmosphere of “Hollandse fado” will stay in the reader's memory. Down to the smallest humiliating, day-to-day details Kriek sketches the hopeless life of a man who is stranded in his job and in his marriage. Everything is even more intensified by the narrow-mindedness of the fifties. More than once this realistic prose reminded me of Voskuil and Reve - they too have a way of portraying the human endeavour as boring and grey. Nevertheless Kriek has his own voice, sad and dragging, which comes out perfectly in 'Hollandse fado'.
-Leeuwarder Courant (14-4-2000)
‘With the detailed descriptions of seats of chairs, of closets, of the light that falls through lace curtains on the plants, of the 'familiar odours of old lungs and old guts' in the corridor Kriek succeeds in evoking a stifling world which he contrasts poignantly with the amorous reveries of Huizing.
- NRC 21-4-00
‘Can he [Huizing] with her [Louise] become himself and forget about his inhibitions? Or are his inhibitions the actual essence of his character? This deliberately slow-written and not-mocking novel is about a man who has to discover just that. The word fado in the title suggests melancholy, longing, nostalgia, a consciousness of the transcience of things, of the futility of everything maybe too. And all that in 1958, in an atmosphere which is so soberly Dutch as one can imagine. Is this possible? Bartho Kriek has proven it is.'
-Vrij Nederland (26-4-00)
'There were moments the book annoyed me. But when I had finished it, to my own surprise it kept on haunting me for a long time.
-Algemeen Dagblad (17-6-00)
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