Novelist Gaea Schoeters is a force to be reckoned with
The journalist’s intriguing second novel looks at a universal story – the doomed romance – through the prism of world history
“All memory is fiction”
It was followed in 2011 by her first novel, Diggers, a thriller set in Flanders Fields. In her second fictional endeavour, De kunst van het vallen (The Art of Falling), Schoeters shows us what happens when love, classical music and history collide.
What started out as a novella bathed in nostalgia – a sentiment all characters are afflicted by in one way or another – soon became much more than that. “My previous novel was 600-plus pages, so I intended to keep it short this time round,” Schoeters explains. “Love and loss were my initial subjects, but, because they are topics with a lot of wiggle room, I decided I could only write about them if the structure was very tight. So I went in search of a form that forced me to stick to the story.”
An affair to remember
The narrator of De kunst van het vallen is a pianist who has an affair with the wife of a conductor. When the woman finally decides to leave her husband, things fall apart rapidly. Unable to play a single note after their break-up, the narrator, whose sex is undefined for the most part of the novel, meets Alex, a diver, at the local swimming pool.
After the narrator is encouraged by Alex to start playing again, Katharina, a Russian pianist who fled the Soviet Union, enters the scene as a new coach. Once again, the narrator embarks on an affair to remember.
I went in search of a form that forced me to stick to the story
Reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the main character’s gender, or lack thereof, is an intriguing aspect of the novel. “Initially I didn’t want to reveal the sex of the narrator,” Schoeters says, “but I wanted to make a statement about the role of fiction. I believe as an author you are responsible for half the novel: The other half is reliant on the interpretation of the reader. Readers look for things to relate to in a novel, and these are different for everyone.”
Although frustrating at first, this offers the readers an interesting main character who stays fairly anonymous, giving us the chance to fill in the blanks.
The second part of the novel recounts the events slightly differently, since “memories are always fiction, especially when they actually happened,” as Schoeters writes. Add a little amnesia to the mix, and the result is a novel about dealing with the past and coming to terms with the future.
Yet the core tale is alternated with chapters about historic events featuring an array of characters such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Yuri Gagarin, Vladimir Mayakovski and Sergei Rachmaninoff. All characters symbolise something, creating several layers and adding an uncanny depth to the basic story, which is told over numerous short chapters.
Fact and fiction meet
“An affair that ends badly is a universal cliché,” Schoeters says, “which is why I didn’t want to tell that story in too much detail. History was a way to look at the situation from a distance and describe those sentiments in a whole other, universal manner. History in a sense is also composed of stories, and, in this novel, it became my way of telling this story.”
When Schoeters started writing, she wasn’t sure which path to take or which images or metaphors to use, but gradually she discovered that, in all those historical facts and tales, there were links with her love story. Fact and fiction influenced each other.
“Because the main characters are pianists,” she says, “the structure was actually handed to me, which is why the novel is constructed like a piece of classical music. The challenge was finding a piece that I could sculpt the novel on.”
Those who want to experience life during a dictatorship should try an affair
The composition however, is sometimes a little too dominant, drawing our attention away from the devastatingly beautiful plot. Nonetheless, it is a bold choice to contrast a love affair, a personal piece of history, with world history.
To quote De kunst van het vallen once again: “Those who want to experience life during a dictatorship should try an affair. Every telephone conversation, every text message is an irresponsible risk.”
Nonetheless, the serious and often tragic subjects are presented to us in such a playful way that you can’t help but be captivated by these multiple realities.
De Kunst van het vallen is an ambitious novel full of mesmerising characters, anecdotes and history that mirror the simple yet poignant tale at the heart of the book. Filled with vivid imagery and powerful metaphors, it is a novel of ideas about time, coincidence and memory.
Photo: Koen Broos
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