Dutch Gifts: Stories, Poems and Creative Non-Fiction on a Netherlandic Theme

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

In 1990, the Netherlandic Press launched a literary competition for
writings on a Netherlandic subject. This is the result, a collection of
three short stories, two sequences of poetry, and one piece of
“creative non-fiction.” The six authors are unknown, although,
according to editor Jacobs, most have published before.

Like all Netherlandic Press’s books, Dutch Gifts is beautifully
designed. Beneath the fancy packaging, however, this gift box is almost
empty. The poems, by Diana Brebner and Pleuke Boyce, are banal (“My
mother was a tree— / a green and yellow tree, / and she grew straight
and tall, / for three score years and ten, / and bore much fruit”).
The creative non-fiction, a historical essay by David Marley, is
breezily written, with insufficient analysis. Of the three stories,
Mario DeMarco’s “Amsterdam by Bicycle,” because it is in the
second person, is awkward and arch. Marieke Jalink-Wijbrans’s “To
Have the Tiger by the Tail” is far less pretentious; its style is,
however, flat, and sometimes trite (“stately houses,” “proud
owner”). Only Anne Konrad’s “Sweeping Clean” is an acceptable
piece. It is always a pleasure to discover an author alive to the
potential precision of English: “The rush of water is choking off now,
gurgling, filling Jean’s watering can . . . to quench her hibiscus.”