A review from A dutch reader  . The book is... be careful what you wish for.
341277
I loved this book and when you start reading this book You cannot stop. It will be difficult to wait for the next book because the end is so exiting. We have to wait till September..
339255
The jacket of this Dutch novel states that it is a humorous satire. However, I thought it was neither humorous nor satirical. The narrator's outlook on life is much too dark and critical. However, the story was quite interesting and led to a surprise ending which kept my interest the whole time. This book can be read in a few sittings and gives the reader a different perspective.
497638
I read this book in Dutch. As I lived in Indonesia it brings back many memories. The story is about the colonial times in Dutch East Indies and the lives of the well to do tea growers. The story is a great read and written by one of the best Dutch writers. Too bad it is not available in English on the kindle books.
1306248
The Dutch. What is up with the Dutch? First I read Herman Koch's The Dinner and Summer House with Swimming Pool (which I reviewed here and here), which were good books, but verrry dark, all about really screwed up families. I mean really screwed up. And then I meet the Sigerius family in Bonita Avenue and realize how really screwed up they are. I mean REALLY screwed up. This is NOT a happy family. This is NOT a happy book.

But I think reading should stretch you, make you think, sometimes make you uncomfortable. This books scores on every level.

The story swirls around Siem Sigerius, the patriarch of the Sigerius clan. Siem, the dad, the beloved math professor and head of a university, the ex-Judo champion, the dutiful father and husband. The wife, two doting daughters. But there is more to this family than we realize.

Right away, his oldest step-daughter, Joni, brings home a boyfriend that took a compromising picture of Siem, naked, ready to take part in a college ritual with students. It endears him to a majority of the college population, but portends poorly for Siem. Aaron becomes tight with the family, and with Siem, especially.

Through varying narrators, we learn Siem's story, the most reliable seeming to be Aaron. Siem is not Joni and Janis' (the sister we hardly ever hear about) father, but their stepfather. Their father disappeared right when Siem showed up, and Joni could care less (should tell us something). AND he has a son, whom he pretty much abandoned when he became a stepfather.

Siem falls for Tineke, the girl's mother, while they are both married and living on different floors of a house. Her husband disappears (that's all we know of him), and Siem moves into their flat. His wife and son get to listen as he becomes father and husband to a new family.

His career takes off, and his genius takes him and his new family to Berkeley and Boston on his rise to the top of the math world.

Meanwhile, his abandoned son becomes a criminal, in and out of prison for escalating crimes, all obvious cries for attention.

The heart of this story is that the perfect family is far from perfect, and that smart and beautiful don't add up to `respectable.' Their duplicitousness seems to drive Aaron(Joni's boyfriend) to psychosis; he splits from reality when he splits from Joni (and the family), the family's secrets sending him over the brink into a world of madness. Wilbert, Siem's real son, is awful, but he's very honest and truthful in his criminality. I wish we could have known the second daughter, Janis; I think her observances would have made this book more interesting.

I hated these characters, but the story is still compelling. The mystery of what happens to these people kept me reading. I give it 3.5 stars. But don't expect happy, light reading. It's dark and deep and dank. This will not restore your faith in humanity, or make you happy in the end. No smiles. No cheeriness.

But this book is still worth a read. Stretch yourself. Go for uncomfortable. It's good for you. And then go for a light, cheery, funny book next. The soul can only stand so much darkness.
3790149
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with this book.  It arrived on time and in fine condition.  The trouble is, this is a story was published in the US under another name.  I was excited for it to arrive, and when it did, I was dismayed to learn that I already had it.  It's on me; I should have read the blurb more closely.  So I would caution anyone who reads mysteries in a series to read the description before purchasing.  Once again:  There was nothing wrong withe the book or with the service, so don't misunderstand me.
2573047
A review of the book or even the movie is one thing.  Are they entertaining?  Sure.  But this book is not being read as entertainment.  It is being read as an instructional manual to one's life.  This is extremely dangerous.  This book denies a judgemental God and therefore denies a true and moral right and wrong.  It serves a selfish person's ideals that "whatever I want is right".  PLEASE BE CAREFUL IN LIVING THIS WAY.  Although success may be found, and happiness attained through the narrow minded self-believing taught in this book.  You may begin to forget what others around you desire and need as these teachings bolster a selfish "I want MY way" mentality.  I would say that if you choose ONE BOOK to just dig into and follow, make it one that teaches humility and serving your common man.  You may not win the lotto, but you'll definitely make a big difference in the world.
2638996
Its hard to say I liked this book. Its a good read, don't get me wrong. The problem for me was its disturbing content. And i mean no disrespect to the author, but it was difficult to read how parents can be so cruel. Would I recommend this book? Yes i would. But with a bit of caution. You'll want to read it with with a box of tissues. Then you'll want to hug your children and let them know how much you love them.
4230057
A good translation of Dutch mystery writer, Baantjer.
1525653
This book rang true, there are too many coincidences to deny its warning. You do so at your peril. Please!
943068
After describing this book to a friend, he said "Well... why should every book need an upside?"

I suppose my friend is correct.  This book is recommended if for no other reason than its unwillingness to deliver the expected.

 This book is disturbing and if you have children, you may wish to skip it.  If you can handle the dark side, this book is well written and a quick read.

 I admit on being torn about recommending this book or not.  It certainly made an impression and if a book is rated on how much emotion it elicits from the reader than this book would have to rate a 10. On the other hand, if you rate a book based on the amount of pleasure it gives the reader, I would have to rate this book a 1.
857159
The readers who have enjoyed this book are very lucky people since there must be a million of equally bad books they can enjoy. Readers with a minimum of critical sense will only finish the book driven by a curiosity about whether it can be so bad right to the end. It can.
2347312
This book is the story about those who moved out of the Netherlands to places around the world and the struggles they had establishing themselves in their new world.  The title is appropriate for what you will encounter as you read.  I met the man who translated this book and he stated that the original book in Dutch is much bigger.  I would have loved to have read more about these people and their interesting lives.  These are true stories, a wonderful non-fiction.
901856
The punch line of the book is very appealing: read what you want, not what others tell you to, and read at whim, don't care for rules. When the argument is developed throughout the book, we see that the approach of "reading at Whim" does involve some method, some rules, and that sometimes you should read what you don't want.

The complete advice goes like this: when you read for pleasure you should read slowly, with full attention, in silence and solitude, so that you can feel "raptness", maximizing the appreciation of the experience. Besides, you should use auto-knowledge to choose what to read, but you should not be satisfied with a too narrow taste: at times you should insist on reading a book  that you don't like at the moment, but that your "detached self" think is good, so that you can achieve "auto-conquest" and widen your taste.

I think this advice is really good. At some points I would have liked the author to develop a little more: e.g., on how to *learn* to suspend disbelief to improve imaginative experiences, or on what "put yourself in the way of events beyond your control" (which enables unpredictable tokens of auto-conquest) would mean for reading books.

I don't agree much with the case against the Adler-Van Doren model. The reasons the author gives for dismissing this model are very subjective and focus on the fact that they provide a list of recommended readings. I think recommendations are valuable, assuming that the reader will not blindly take them as assignments, but as mere suggestions. The recommendation list of Adler-Van Doren is only an Appendix of their book, and I quote them: "The list is not something to be gotten through in any amount of time. It is not a challenge that you can meet only by finishing every item on it".

In the end, the author of this book agrees to a large extent with Adler-Van Doren, not only on what he explicitly acknowledges. E.g., both insist that it is better to read well than to read widely, and they share most of the techniques for improving attention and understanding. The approaches are complementary: while one focus on reading for pleasure and the other focus on reading for understanding, there are large overlaps, with major agreements and only minor conflicts.
1090411
Great read ... and a warning to, at the very least, be careful about what you wish for!  All our actions DO have consequences somewhere down the line.
3692845
This is a really classic book.
This is an allegory within an allegory and therefore is a doubly deceptive book. If you try to read reality into it, you have missed the point. Remember this is a novel; it is not real life and and I do not refer only to the seeming confusion on the end.
This is the story of the difficulties of a young man forsaking one culture to live in another, when he is given no choice. Think of this boy moving from India to Canada and the difficulties that he faces particularly the pull of India that, if he does not conquer, will destroy him: the 450 pound tiger he has to control. Think of the alien character of the sea: Canada is as alien as the sea.
This is a truly exciting book that I recommend people re-read from the double allegory perspective.
3814020
If every reader shared 99% of my personal history, I could easily recommend this book, but that is certainly not the case. The Tiger's Wife smells like 'rakija' and it tastes like 'burek' for me. The grandfather character reminds me my grandfathers, both from the Balkans. It sounds like the melodies I find very difficult to withstand emotinally, reminding me a country ripped apart, and a lot of childhood memories betrayed. The author does not fail to vividly portray the modern jungle in which the human condition can be somehow said to be worse than a tiger eating itself out of hunger and desperation.

On the other hand, I find it difficult to recommend it to most of the people; it is an output of the strange world we live in, a world filled with prizes that can be misleading unfortunately. The book is not a literary gem, it is definitely not the novel of the year and the reader will probably have to struggle throughout the overworked sentences. Sentences that try very hard, more than necessary if you will, to support a loosely coupled network of stories. Some of which you might enjoy but nevertheless lead to a not very well connected narrative. This may sound strange but I had the feeling that, inside this novel, there was a novel struggling to get out but could not. Alas, in the end, I have to judge it by the words on the page, as it is, not as it was intended.

I will never forget this book, like I will never forget my memories that resonate with the stories depicted in the novel. And if you give it a chance, maybe you will not be satisfied, but then again, maybe some of you will enjoy it like a glass of 'rakija' that is not a masterpiece but nevertheless still a glass of 'rakija' with a potential to help you discover one or two things in the end.
2425374
I read this book years ago but for some reason, keep coming back to it. It's an obscure Dutch author writing incredibly honestly about a situation that has no 'normal'. I've read all the reviews on here and the negs are missing the point, and actually are justifying why guys find it so hard to open up about how they feel when things get hard.

Sure, you can all say that you would behave differently from the author but dealing with the mortality of a person you love has no handbook and who knows how you would actually react unless you were in that spot.

Admire the honesty, don't judge it. This is a praiseworthy book that I think everyone needs to read. It's the most real account of dealing with the death of a loved one i have read. You will cry.