Bonita Avenue

Starred review from October 20, 2014
Dutch author Buwalda’s magnificent first novel offers proof of Tolstoy’s dictum that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Three uniquely unreliable voices narrate this darkly humorous familial drama: the mentally precarious Aaron Bever; his beautiful girlfriend, Joni Sigerius; and her stepfather, eminent math genius and university rector Siem Sigerius. Their interweaving narratives, which hop between the Netherlands, Shanghai, Belgium, and California, chart the years between the rise and fall of their outwardly successful but privately dysfunctional family. Buwalda displays the sexual appetites of his characters from puritanical to hedonistic against the 1990s backdrop of an emerging Internet and concomitant ascendency of online porn. Temperatures rise until the explosion of a Dutch fireworks factory, which is followed by familial pyrotechnics. A custard doughnut plays a decisive role in deciding the Sigeriuses’ fate. Questions arise regarding the nature of probability and coincidence, as well as who really gets to wear not only the pants in a relationship but the racy feminine undergarments, too.

December 1, 2014
A family saga that is variously compelling, trashy and horrific, this debut has rough edges and plausibility problems-not unlike the Stieg Larsson trilogy-and movie written all over it. Siem Sigerius is a former judo champ whose math skills help him rise to head a Dutch university. While on a business trip, he discovers his beautiful stepdaughter Joni is the main character in a homemade porn website, which she has developed with her partner, Aaron, and turned into a seven-figure enterprise. Into the picture shambles Wilbert, Siem's son from his first marriage, a nasty character whom Siem and Joni perjured into jail six years before the main action begins. Buwalda, a one-time Dutch journalist, shifts points of view and time frames, making frequent allusions to one terrible event while maintaining a patina of familial order, of dinners, dates, vacations. Yet not only do awful revelations and revenge hang over the household, the family is marked across generations by small and large deceits. The jagged structure suggests a film director who went into the editing room with some coke and bourbon and cut his footage with runic abandon. The method works in part to stoke suspense. Siem's surprising fate is referred to laconically on Page 69, one impetus for it starts at 249, and the big blow doesn't arrive until near the end. At the same time, some things stoke disbelief, notably what pushes Siem over the edge and Joni's progress from website floozy to McKinsey intern to submersion in the California skin trade, shedding a husband and child along the way. Buwalda's writing, in translation from Dutch, is a cut above the potboiler this might be with more corpses. His strength are sustained scenes that will linger in memory after other parts of the brain have given up on fitting together the pieces of this puzzler.

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Starred review from December 1, 2014
Pure chance leads to Siem Sigerius' astronomical success. A broken leg ends his career as a Dutch judo champion, and during his convalescence, his professor father-in-law discovers his mathematical genius, leading to a quick degree, a teaching stint at Berkeley, years as the rector of a Netherlands technical college, and a high-level political post. The time at Berkeley, when the family lived on Bonita Avenue, is remembered as a truly happy period before the family's troubles start. Wilbert, Siem's son from his ill-fated first marriage, is a thug imprisoned for a brutal killing who becomes an increasing threat. The older of the two stepdaughters Siem loves as his own, Joni, starts a profitable Web porn site with her longtime boyfriend, schizophrenic photographer Aaron Bever, which Siemaroused by his infatuation with a studentdiscovers. Dutch author Buwalda's debut skips around chronologically, with the third-person narrative interspersed with first-person accounts by the sole character telling her own story, Joni, and it becomes increasingly compulsive reading as it nears its dark close. This tumultuous saga of a family breaking down, with some European references that American readers might miss, is an international best-seller and award winner. A significant literary achievement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2014

Respected mathematics professor Siem Sigerius has the kind of picture-perfect life that in fiction inevitably implodes. Over 300,000 copies sold in the author's native Holland, translation into seven languages, plus receipt of five of the 12 prizes for which it was nominated.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2014

Siem Sigerius is a first-class judoka, a genius mathematician, a jazz aficionado, and head of Tubantia University. Life is good in the spacious farmhouse he shares with his furniture-maker wife, Tineke, and her two teenage daughters, Joni and Janis, until an explosion at a fireworks factory brings to light secrets that send Siem and those around him on a hellish descent. Siem discovers the sex website of Joni and her photographer boyfriend, Aaron, under particularly ignoble circumstances, and the reemergence of convicted murderer Wilbert, Siem's son from a previous marriage, doesn't bode well for anyone. Guilt and fear rule the decisions the characters make, sending each further down the darkest of paths, as the narrative spins from the Netherlands to Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA. VERDICT Published in Buwalda's native Holland in 2010, this award-winning debut novel is flat-out extraordinary. The rich layer of detail would be impressive when applied to one topic, but Buwalda creates multiple complex worlds around vastly different subjects: the porn industry, mathematics, music, and judo, among others. An outstanding literary suspense story that will appeal to a wide range of readers. [See Prepub Alert, 7/14/14.]--Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014

Siem Sigerius is a first-class judoka, a genius mathematician, a jazz aficionado, and head of Tubantia University. Life is good in the spacious farmhouse he shares with his furniture-maker wife, Tineke, and her two teenage daughters, Joni and Janis, until an explosion at a fireworks factory brings to light secrets that send Siem and those around him on a hellish descent. Siem discovers the sex website of Joni and her photographer boyfriend, Aaron, under particularly ignoble circumstances, and the reemergence of convicted murderer Wilbert, Siem's son from a previous marriage, doesn't bode well for anyone. Guilt and fear rule the decisions the characters make, sending each further down the darkest of paths, as the narrative spins from the Netherlands to Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA. VERDICT Published in Buwalda's native Holland in 2010, this award-winning debut novel is flat-out extraordinary. The rich layer of detail would be impressive when applied to one topic, but Buwalda creates multiple complex worlds around vastly different subjects: the porn industry, mathematics, music, and judo, among others. An outstanding literary suspense story that will appeal to a wide range of readers. [See Prepub Alert, 7/14/14.]--Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.