[This review was written c.2007, which may explain the first line. On the other hand, it may not. Personally, I have no idea what 'tiresome tales of a pubescent sorcerer' refers to...]
Enveloped as it is with a turgid enthralment for the tiresome tales of a pubescent sorcerer, the English speaking world has of late seriously neglected much of the best children’s fiction to have been produced on mainland Europe. Chief among its losses are the four books in the ‘Van’ series, an enterprising collection of stories that have thus far failed to grab the attention of anyone outside of Holland, their country of origin. Though they are all written by the same two people (an anonymous husband and wife team based in Amsterdam) each of the four works that make up the series is credited to a separate author, whose surname always begins with the ubiquitous prefix ‘Van’ and always ends with an unsubtle pun on the title. Whilst these broad jokes cannot be blamed on clumsy translation – all the books were in fact originally written in English – we may forgive them when we consider that the series was primarily designed to attract a readership of teenagers. The first book – entitled Around Amsterdam – was by Van Tram, the second – Nightly Creeps by Van Tom (its intriguing subtitle was The Operatic Menace). The third book – and central subject of this review – was Van Eel’s Underwater Transportation. For the fourth and most recent book, the joke took a nosedive into the quagmire of complexity. So ‘complicated’ was it, in fact, that it provoked a court case, in which the reclusive authors were accused of using children’s literature to infiltrate young minds with the type of political ideas that should only concern adults. Though the case was quashed (the judge summing up with the rhetorical question ‘Why else would anyone write if it wasn’t to infiltrate minds?’) there is no doubt that it raised many questions, as well as boosting the sales of the book, leading some to suggest that the entire controversy was set up by the authors themselves.
The title of the book in question was My Two Mothers; the chosen pseudonym Van Dyck. Published only months before the Dutch senate met to readdress the adoption rights of homosexual couples, there is no doubt that the authors had some sort of political agenda. What that agenda was, however, is quite another question. Many commentators sensed hostility in the pun, presuming its source to be the slang for a lesbian, where others championed the book for supporting the homosexual cause, preferring to think (mistakenly, I feel) that it referred to the alternative word for a dam or levee, thereby standing as a metaphor for the inequalities that the senate were seeking to readdress and in the long term ‘break’. Whatever the real motivation behind the book, it remains the first children’s book to seriously address the subject of homosexual adoption, which is a landmark in itself. Despite this, I feel obliged to point out that, title aside, it is by far and away the worst book of the ‘Van’ series. As well as being shoddily written and inexplicably plot-less, it is also abhorrently dull in the way only politically charged books can be. That its sensational subject matter should have made it the most popular in the ‘Van’ series is undoubtedly a perversion of justice. Unfortunately, there is little chance of this distortion being refigured. Indeed, it seems that My Two Mothers was made to order; as if the authors’ publishers had sent them a memo whilst it was being conceived asking them to ‘forget good literature, and write a book that sells instead’. The fact is that though ‘Around Amsterdam’ was somewhat of an cult hit, the failure of Nightly Creeps and Underwater Transportation to attract new readers clearly led the authors to consider a more tactical approach. This is a pity, for though it made them little money, they had come to achieve something in Underwater Transportation the like of which I have never seen before or since, a fact fully confirmed by its inclusion on Georgy Riecke’s already infamous (if not inaccurate) inventory of the Greatest European Novels by Contempoary Writers.
Like all the books in the ‘Van’ series, all the action in Underwater Transportation takes place in Amsterdam. This is not the Amsterdam of the travel brochure, however, but that of those who live there and know both the city and its history intimately. The main characters are also unchanged from the two previous books: three children in their mid teens whose narcoticised names continue to reflect the authors’ obsessions with basic wordplay – Hari Ash, David Opie and Hannah Bishop (the latter, interestingly, is a feisty British girl; included, I fancy, as an attempt to attract British readers, which might also explain the fact that the books were all written in English, though as I have already mentioned, the ‘Van’ series has had no success whatsoever outside of Holland). The choice of two boys and one girl, however, seems to have been somewhat inspired, though again this only really comes into its own in Underwater Transportation, providing a lusty psychological subplot based around the silent competition between the two boys to win Hannah’s admiration.
Otherwise, the central plot is as follows: Attached to the bottom of an abandoned barge, the children find an ancient document written by Pieter Hoofdiger, a seventeenth century merchant, which reveals the story of how fearful Catholics in Amsterdam hid precious jewels and artworks in watertight casks and threw them into the canals to keep them safe from the pious and rampaging Protestant iconoclasts. Though many of these casks were recovered as soon as the major threat had passed, according to Hoofdiger as many as a dozen were never to be found again. Hoofdiger himself tried to locate the missing casks, but failed. The document turns out also to be his suicide note. The children, however, are not the least bit daunted by the challenge. ‘So what if Hoofdiger died miserably?’ asks Hannah, in her inimitable way, for ‘he was obviously a loser anyway’. Not for a moment do we doubt that the children will let this opportunity will pass, for though each of them harbours personal fears and anxieties, collectively they ooze the kind of self-confidence last seen when Genghis Khan prepared to wrestle with a gnat. The idea of spending their summer holidays diving into the depths of Amsterdam’s murkiest canals does not appear to bother them. Nor should it bother the reader, for when it comes to detailed descriptions of canals, interspersed with obscure historical facts about the Dutch Reformation, we are in the very best hands. Not only is their knowledge of these two subjects extensive, but these talented authors are somehow able to convey it all in a language that any child or adult can understand. What is more, they never lose grasp of the central narrative, though digressions are commonplace.
‘Every stretch of every canal’ begins the fourth chapter ‘has a personality of its own’. Once you have finished reading this book, this is never in doubt. Is this the greatest ever canal-orientated novel? I suspect as much. But there is much more to than this. In the second half of the book, I cannot help but detect a subtle shift in the narrative. Not content with their heady mixture of historical thriller, clumsy adolescent romance and travel reportage, a dash of science fiction is thrown into the pot, in the shape of everyone’s favourite cod-literary device: time travel. On the first reading of the book, this was the juncture at which I feared the worst, preparing myself for the stagnant storm of jargon-coated tedium that such devices normally kick up. However, I was quietly surprised by what turns to be the ‘underwater transportation’ of the title; the means by which each of the children in turn are able to go back into the late sixteenth century and thus discover exactly where the precious casks were dropped. Rather than wheel out some sort of gothic contraption complete with pincushion helmets, digital displays and space boots, time travel is in this instance equated with a kind of spiritual experience, which for the more enlightened readers clearly relates back to the vital differences between sixteenth century Catholic and Prostestant theology. Consider for instance the following passage, in which Hari achieves ‘transportation’ for the first time:
‘As he dives once more into the cloudy waters, Hari tries hard to imagine the sequence of events on that significant day in 1566. One by one he considers every emotion that might have been felt and holds them in his mind as if they were paintings hung in a room around which he can walk. As he does so he feels the water close about him, like a cloak. But closer still is his sense of history.
As he thinks, he feels the water thickening like soup. The more he thinks, the more it thickens. And yet he does not fear that he will drown, for he is reassured by the flame of hope that burns within his soul.’
It is impossible, surely, to ignore the palpable parallels between this passage and the various episodes in the holy diaries of St Gregor of Samsat, in themselves close cousins of many other Catholic testimonies of the time. The only difference, maybe, is the absence of God (a small point, perhaps, but one worth making nonetheless). Who or what then, we ask, is filling in for the almighty? Is it perhaps this mysterious ‘sense of history’? I believe that it is. The use of the time travel device, therefore, is not simply a desperate attempt to inject some excitement into an otherwise lacklustre story, but an opportunity for the authors to push concepts and philosophies onto the stage, under cover of cloaks.
Let us return, however, to the story. Do the three children manage to find the wooden casks? Yes. A solitary cask is indeed discovered. This is a children’s book, after all, reluctant to serve up despondency in the measurements that most of us desire, though it stops short, at least, of giving the characters all that they desired.
In this cask the children find jewels, mostly pendants, of which the majority contain images of the Virgin Mary. There is also a miniature oil painting of St Jerome. At this point, the adult reader prepares himself for further religious subtext, only to be disappointed. All that ensues is a smattering of juvenile discourse. ‘Who’s the old geezer with the lion?’ asks David. ‘Who cares?’ says Hannah ‘So long as it sells’ (a comment which cannot help but remind us, of course, of the fourth book in the series). This is not untypical authorial manoeuvre and one that leads us to only one conclusion; when dealing with authors such as these, you must only expect the unexpected. It has been argued that Underwater Transportation is inconsistent – Teri Noosechek once called it ‘a book caught in the midst of an identity crisis’ – however, in the final analysis, I cannot but praise these contradictions, clothed as they are in prose of the highest order. In one sentence alone I am reminded of Milne, Murakami, Swift and Sartre, with the faintest touch of the great Blyton herself. Throw in a handful of poetic paragraphs about irrigation in the seventeenth century, pepper with the matter-of-fact dialogue of three fifteen-year-olds and serve with a small side plate of oblique religious references and what more could you ask for from a children’s book?
Review by Jinpes Terenk
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