This story holds a startling but brilliant social commentary, ranging from relationships to war to poverty. This, to me, is truly one of the most mesmerizing and brilliant pieces of literature I’ve read. However, I received this book from my mother for my birthday in 2007 and, since then, it has become one of my favorites. Because of this, I was very reluctant to purchase it, fearing its contents would not be worth the price.

Larry ManglitzĪs an extremely difficult book to find, the few English editions available are priced quite expensively, most ranging from $100 to $200 on any given site. I think one of the very finest gay novels that I have read. The novel respresents a familiar story for the gay man, who loved in his childhood. The book and the film have haunted me, with the sense of both the beauty and tragedy of life. The novel is superior to the film although that is quite lovely also. And the incredible romance is alive for him only in that mysterious and wonderful realm of remembrance, of imagination. And the older Jerone is resolved to knowing the experience in reality is dead, the possiblity of a reunion is dead - and ultimately his desire for the real find of the soldier is dead. In 1980 when the Canadian soldiers return to Amsterdam to celebrate the Anniversary of the end of the war, Jerone makes an effort to locate Walt, but to no success. The reader doesn't have the happy conclusion of the lost soldier being found. Jerone is an adult and in his remembrance of Walt and at the very end imagines his hand on his knee, in a sexual fantasy of his. At the end of the novel the reader encounters the strong impact of Walt on the boy. His intensity borders on a mental collapse. It is in the last part of the novel that the reader is aware of a disconnectedness that emerges for Jerone he looks for his former lover and feels detached from the life he has returned to. I was amazed to discover that about a third of the novel is given over to the boy's experience when he returns to Amsterdam after the war is ended. The boy's love intensifies after Walt leaves the small village where he has been posted in Holland.

Eventually it is clear that he has been a willing partner with Walt and has fallen in love with him. What the boy needs to do is to let go of the internal instincts that he has been given by his society/culture. And some of them flirted and encouraged me, but not with the magnetism and persistance of Walt. Early in my own childhood I was attracted to some of the older boys in the small town where I lived. What moved me in the film was the way Jerone was drawn to Walt and the boy's fear. I had trouble ordering it - trouble communicating with American Express, but I persisted and the book came yesterday. I saw the movie several times, and came across a copy of the book through Barnes and Nobles.

For a lost soldier by rudi van dantzig