Dolf van der Haven’s Reviews > De boeken der kleine zielen > Status Update

The last book goes fast forward ten years. The core of the family moved with Constance, the black sheep, away from The Hague to Driebergen. It turns out in the first chapters already that three minot characters died. The real centre of the family is now Adrian/Addy, who has become a doctor and is married with children. Of course, his is not a happy marriage and a lot of this book revolves around this issue.

Book Three, Twilight of the Souls, focuses mostly on some minor characters. As a result, the overarching storyline gets lost a bit. This part is, however, also very eventful. The family is scattered apart more than ever, one brother ends up in a mental institute, multiple characters die (bodycount: 4) and, fully in the style of The Silent Force, the matriarch has visions of all disasters to come.

Finished book one out of four. Couperus is brilliant in his use of language and manages, in all the formality of the story's character, to include humour and tension, eventually leading to the final crisis. He was called the Dutch Thackeray for a good reason.