Karel van Loon: A Father's Affair

Reviewed by ROBIN ARTHUR

Armin, a man with a 13-year-old son and trying to have a baby with a new partner, discovers he is infertile - and always has been.

Ten years dead, the boy's mother Monika cannot answer the riddle. Saved from self-destructive grief at Monika's early death by the demands of being sole parent to three-year-old Bo, Armin is devastated that both relationships now seem built on a lie. He wants answers to "a wake-up call from the far shore of the river Styx".

And, of course, he ignores the advice of a friend - haven't we all - that "the answers you get could well be harder to live with than the questions". His lurching search for suspects becomes a psychological thriller weaving tales of his past love, her death and the bond between man and boy.

Armin's job as a proof reader of scientific journals is a sly device to thread the theories of modern biology and genetics throughout the "whodunit'.

The mystery is one only a man could face - a woman could only in the most unlikely situations later face the question: is this really my child? Bearing a child brings a certainty that the randomness of a man's momentary contribution to conception can't match. By contrast, at least rearing doubts are gender mutual.

Men striving for meaning in their relationship with a son, surrogate or otherwise, are a trail already recently well trod by Nick Hornsby's About a Boy and Tony Parson's Man and Boy.

But reading this European prize-winning novel is no "collect the set" exercise. Dutch author Karel van Loon's take is bitter chocolate to the British authors' hard-boiled sweets. His cultural pick'n'mix offers classical mythology, biblical apocrypha, Bach, Dolly Parton, soccer and science with frank sex and plain emotion. Yet for all the modern Renaissance touches, at heart this novel may just be a simple allegory for many a modern anxiety. Can the living bonds with those closest to us - whether woven by nurture or nature - survive the burdens of what's done and dead? The debate is as old as the question of whether biology is destiny. The answer is more than just a father's affair.

Archetype, $27.95


*****

Archetype/Allen & Unwin and canvas have five copies of Karel van Loon's A Father's Affair to give away. Just write your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: canvas, van Loon giveaway, PO Box 3290, Auckland, to reach us by September 12.