The Dream Room

Into its 120 pages, Mring folds a war memoir, a family psychodrama and a meditation on time and memory. It is a miracle of compression: everything is significantone races through it, eager to discover the heart of the mystery. Guardian The story of a family mother, father (ex-World War II pilot), twelve-year-old son David who live above a toy shop in a small town on the windswept Dutch coast. On the same day that David finds himself listening to the toy shop owner complaining that he cant sell model aeroplane kits any more because kids nowadays are too lazy to glue all the pieces together, Davids father quits his job in a fit of pique and pride. A few hours later, his mother comes home, having left her job too. So, David devises a plan and before the day is over the whole family is at home, putting model aeroplanes together. A wonderful, perfect summer ensues, suddenly interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor, his fathers old friend from the war. His arrival revives old feelings of loyalty, love and hatred and ensures that nothing will ever return to a perfect state again. Accessible, warm, funny and wise, this novel was a massive bestseller in Mrings native Holland. A gem of a story, it has the fable-like appeal of a Miss Garnets Angel (but without the middle-Englandness) or of Bernard Schlinks The Reader (but without the heavy moral overtone).The book is most reminiscent of J.L. Carrs A Month in the Country, the Booker Prize-winning English novel set just after World War I, heavy with nostalgia, evocative, melancholy.