It seems strange that the third child of four would so resent the arrival of another baby as Ellen, the narrator of this shockingly candid novel, does. In a black, edgy narrative of multiple time-shifts she moves between memories of the dangerously clever and not very happy child she once was and the still clever and even more miserable adult she now is. The tone throughout is self-conscious, brutal and determinedly unsentimental. The adult Ellen - now a pathologist - returns after an absence of 25 years to the family home she once shared with her parents - who ran a newspaper cuttings service from it - and her three siblings. In the early flashbacks much attention is given to the children busily becoming individuals while their parents remain engaged in a great passion. This all changes when a tragic accident to the fourth child, a toddler, signals the end of normality. With the sickly new baby and increased tensions, family life begins to rot from within. Mother becomes obsessed with the infant. But it is far more complicated than that. From the outset Dorrestein wants the reader to know a horrific tragedy has occurred but the full extent is left undisclosed until the end. Unfortunately by that stage Ellen, the bitter and angry narrator, may well have alienated you to the point of not caring, I didn't. Still, as a study of the daft things people do, A Heart of Stone, set in the Netherlands of today, has its moments. Bet someone makes the movie.
