This book report is about the book Passion Fruit by Karel Glastra van Loon. It’s about Armin, who discovers that his son cannot be his real son. Later it turns out that it is his half-brother.
- Title: The passion fruit
- Author: Karel Glastra van Loon
- First print: April 1999
- Number of pages: 238
- Kind of work: Novel
- Literary movement: Modern Dutch literature
- The writer of the book is part of the book.
- The story is written in the I form.
- Time passes non-chronologically.
- About 16 years pass between the first and last page.
- The story is divided into chapters.
- The story takes place in and around Amsterdam.
- Thematic: Deceit from your loved ones. After years, Armin finds out that his deceased girlfriend has been pregnant with his own father. And that his son is actually his half-brother.
- Motifs: father-son relationship, love and deceit.
- The author: The author was born in 1962. Apart from being a writer, Karel is also a freelance journalist and television maker. Another book he has written is the collection of short stories “Tonight the World Gone Mad” (1997). This collection of short stories was nominated for the ECI Prize for Today’s Writers.
- Title explanation: You probably have to cut the title into 2 pieces, passion and fruit. The meaning of passion is: the suffering, the hobby. These two words indicate the fruit by which the child, Bo, is meant.
Motto:
From the start | From the beginning | From the beginning, that’s since Bo was born. |
Most every heart | Most everyone’s heart | Most everyone’s heart, because everyone loved him. |
That’s ever broken | That was once broken | That was once broken, Armin’s heart that has been broken. |
Was because | Was because | Was because and it always goes without saying. |
There always was | There always was | |
A man to blame | A man to blame | A man to blame, this is the Bo’s biological father means, which Armin blames. |
Summary:
After his wife, Monika, has died, Armin starts a new relationship. He wants a child from this woman, but after examination he finds out that he has been sterile all his life. It then drinks to him that his son, from his previous relationship, cannot be his and that Monika must have cheated on him. He will investigate who is the biological father of his son ?? is. After the death of his father, he finds a note between his father’s things with on it: I am pregnant. M. He then finds out that his son is not his son but his half-brother.
Processing:
There were several passages that impressed me, but especially Armin. This is mainly due to the passage in which Armin finds the note that says: I am pregnant. M. It seems to me very much to experience that. Firstly, his girlfriend slept with his father and secondly, he only finds out after years.
Description of the persons:
- The main character is Armin Minderhout. He has a “son”, Bo.
- Monika: Armin’s deceased girlfriend. She is a free person who likes to do her own thing. Her character does not come up, because she is already dead.
- Ellen: She is the second woman in Armin’s life. She also knew Monika, they were friends. She had known all along that Armin was not Bo’s biological father, but she said nothing. She has a gentle disposition. She supports Armin a lot and she is sweet and caring for him.
I would like to put a question to Armin’s father. My question would then be: Why
do you go to bed with the wife of your own son ?? This I wonder, because I find it rather strange how anyone could do that. He cheated on his own wife and slept with his son’s girlfriend. That doesn’t really seem normal to me.
The title passion fruit does not reveal any aspect of the story, which is why I think it’s a great title. But if I had to come up with a title I would choose: “Hidden”, because it remained hidden from Armin for a long time about the pregnancy.
Evaluation:
The subject
It is an interesting topic that is very understandable. The topic was treated with great depth. The subject is not recognizable in my experience, because luckily I have never experienced it myself. I’ve thought about cheating myself once, but I’ve never thought about having a child while you’re sterile. When I had read the book I thought about it for a while. I did get a certain opinion about it from reading the book, namely that it is also good for a man to raise his child when it is not his own child. I would leave out some things like those scientific things, because it is not really important and it does not provide depth or explanations.
I don’t know of any books or movies about having children while you are sterile, but I do know books about motives, such as death, or adultery.
The events:
The events in the story were the most important in this book. There are quite a lot of events, but it is still possible. But that does not make the book any less. The events were sometimes unexpected, which made the book a bit more exciting. A lot of events were very surprising and credible. They were surprising because those events happened very suddenly and they were credible because those events can happen in real life too. There were some shocking events, such as the play that Armin found out that he was sterile and that Bo could not be his child. And also that Armin discovered that his own father was Bo’s father. The events evoked certain feelings, for example when Armin found out that Monica had cheated on his father. This provoked feelings of disbelief because I wanted to know why she did that. The outcome was very shocking as Armin discovered that his father was Bo’s real father.
The persons:
The people came across very lifelike, because it could have been a real story. I could empathize with the people because it was believable and they drew you into the story. I have not really been able to discover qualities in the people I recognize in myself. I have not really recognized people who could also occur in my environment. A book cannot change me anyway, and this book certainly cannot. I appreciated Armin’s quality of wanting everything, because this is how he found out what happened. I think the writer got the main characters to act just fine, because this is how a really interesting story came about.
The structure:
The story was easy to read. Some of the things were a bit boring to read, like those pieces on biochemistry, because it doesn’t belong in this book. Some parts were exciting, because they revealed who the real father was and also that Armin is sterile. In the end, his grandfather actually seemed to be bo’s father. That was surprising, because you don’t expect that.
Language use:
The language use was easy to understand, because few difficult words were used. All events were described in a good way so that you can easily understand them. There were quite a lot of dialogues in it, but the dialogues that did exist were not always described easily. I found the sentences ?? I have to reinvent myself ?? and: I lie the truth very special.