Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker

Published in the Netherlands in 2010; published in translation by Penguin Books on February 26, 2013 

A Dutch woman who introduces herself to people as Emilie rents an isolated house near Caernarfon, Wales, where she ponders Emily Dickinson. She looks out the window at night, recalling a former lover. She thinks about the uncle who once wandered off into a pond and just stood there, half submerged. She wonders about the geese in the field next to the house; some have gone missing. She fears meeting the owner of the black sheep that have wandered onto her property. Every now and then she is overcome by tears. Why is she in Wales? Perhaps, as Dickinson might have done by writing poetry, Emilie is trying "to hold back time, to make it bearable." Something has clearly gone wrong in Emilie's life, something from which she is fleeing. Soon enough, the story shifts to Holland and we begin to learn what might have prompted her reclusive behavior. It takes some time, however, for an explanation to come into focus, as Gerbrand Bakker teases the reader with bits of the truth, never quite revealing Emilie's story in its entirety.

Although the scenes of Emilie in isolation are somber, those in which characters interact with one another -- Emilie and an inquisitive couple who own a bakery; Emilie and a doctor who doesn't believe her (no one does) when she explains that a badger bit her foot; Emilie's husband, Rutger, and her bickering parents; Rutger and the enigmatic police officer who befriends him -- are almost whimsical. As the novel unfolds, the reader wonders whether Emile will begin to let people into her life. She meets the sheep farmer as well as a student who is mapping a hiking path that runs through her property. Whether she will make a meaningful connection with either of them is a question that contributes much of the novel's dramatic tension.

Ten White Geese is not a plot-heavy story, but it does have some surprises. Although the story is realistic, it has a surrealistic quality. As is true of Dickinson's poetry, Ten White Geese is ambiguous, open to diverse interpretations. How much of the novel is unvarnished truth, how much is perspective (truth told slant, as Dickinson would say), is unclear. A reader who is so inclined will probably be able to discern symbolism in the vulnerable geese, in the foot injuries that two characters suffer, in the black sheep and in a stone circle that occupies Emilie's attention.

Although Emilie, before coming to Wales, was writing about the "all-too-eager canonization" of Dickinson, Bakker is clearly a fan. Ten White Geese quotes lines from Dickinson's poetry, quarrels with Dickinson's biographer, and makes references to the poems that assume the reader's familiarity with at least her best known work. Bees and roses show up in Dickinson's poetry and in Emilie's life. Some of Dickinson's recurring themes (death, pain, separation) are echoed in the story. There are obvious parallels between Emilie and Dickinson. Emilie describes Dickinson as a "puling woman who hid herself away in her house and garden, wordlessly insisting with everything she did or did not do that people should just ignore her, yet fishing for validation like a whimpering child, scared to death that the affection she showed others ... would remain unanswered." She could be describing herself.

While I wouldn't necessarily characterize Bakker's prose as lyrical, there is a poetic sensibility in his careful word choices, in the rhythm of his sentences, and in the novel's hidden meanings. This melancholy novel invites rereading (alongside an anthology of Dickinson's poetry), with each new investigation of the text yielding a new way of understanding the story.

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