Zandvoort dune
Photo by maessive used under a Creative Commons license.

Marcel Möring, The Dream Room (William Morrow, 2002).
A concise and graceful novella about a number of things all at once: coming of age, flight, a fragile family.  At the outset, the narrator, David, is an adolescent in the 1960s, but the story moves both backward and forward by decades. Möring, an acclaimed Dutch author, uses a light touch in painting a story that may be largely autobiographical.

Here is Möring’s site.  The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature offers this information about him. Marianne Brace profiled him for The Independent. The Complete Review says that while it isn’t perfect, it is exceptional; it also provides links, including reviews in German, French and Dutch. Justine Jordan (The Guardian) calls it a miracle of compression: everything is significant, yet nothing is laboured. Alfred Hickling (The Guardian) says it’s effortlessly written, charmingly drawn, and as light as the thermals on which early airmen drifted. Carol Jiménez says it is magical how the story emerges rather than evolves. Zulfikar Abbany (The Observer) sees too much missing between the pages.

Buy it at Amazon.com.