History of a Pleasure Seeker
In fictionalized early twentieth-century Amsterdam, Piet Barol, son of a middle-class paper-pusher, secures a job with the plush Vermeulen-Sickerts family as private tutor to a brilliant but cripplingly obsessive young boy. Progress with his pupil is slow, but hot baths, fine vestments inherited from the master of the house, and pointed attention from the master’s wife soon have the handsome, charming, and absurdly lucky Piet employing the tastes instilled in him by his late, Parisian mother and assuming the high-society role he’d long planned for. Historical references abound—hotel tycoon Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts is deep into building a tony New York property, his first American venture, when the U.S. market collapses—and they are transporting and evocative. This bildungsroman is as smart as it is seductive, and seduction—by finery, older women, successful men, and aged brandies—in the novel is rampant. Readers will savor final scenes aboard the gilded ocean-liner Eugenie and welcome the undercurrent that perhaps Piet’s good fortune isn’t luck at all but a lesson that pleasure exists for those who seek it. --Annie Bostrom