Yesterday, a Novel

In this bewitching story-memoir, Maria Dermout recollects the moods, the colors, the emotions, the dramas of a childhood, more than half a century ago, in Java.

The East Indies of long ago, and the equally magic and faraway world of childhood, are seen through time as through a gauze curtain: the house in the walled garden, the birds like animated jewels, the deer stepping carefully through wet grass, the Dutch Colonial gentlemen driv-ing to great gala balls at twilight — tall white candles burning in their carriage lanterns— to waltz on marble-floored verandas with ladies in decollete; the porcelain tea pavilion in the orchard; Papa in long batik trousers and a starched white jacket at breakfast; the artist-sorcerer natives— and the little girl born in Java of Dutch ancestors, nurtured on magic, accustomed to being surrounded by beauty, with her shadowy knowledge of a distant Europe, her innocent comprehension of her young aunt’s love affair, her recognition of a respected elder’s evil nature, and her final farewell to the enchanted world of her childhood as she leaves the islands for school in Holland. All this is re-ereated with luminous grace and simplicity.

Maria Dermout’s The Ten Thousand Things —her first full-length novel, written in her late sixties— was a critical triumph around the world. The New York Times called it “a magic and enchanted book.” The words apply equally to this earlier work—written at 63—that is a twofold evocation of yesterday: the universal yesterday of childhood and another yesterday which, thanks to Maria Dermout’s inspired writing, becomes as vivid a part of the reader’s memories as if he had lived it : the exquisite world, now gone forever, of the East Indies just before the coming of modern times.