The History of a Pleasure-Seeker

November 28, 2011
The title of Mason’s latest misleads, not only because his story details an interlude in a young man’s life, not a history, but also because this man is less a seeker than a receiver. The operative word, however, is pleasure, which comes in abundance to both the reader and the seductively handsome Piet Barol. The story opens in Amsterdam, 1907, during the belle époque, which Mason evokes with delightful period detail. Piet, at 24, is hired as a tutor for the deeply troubled son of the wealthy Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, a devout Calvinist whose belief in predetermination guides him to a degree that he conceals even from his cherished wife, Jacobina. Their obsessive son, Egbert, is tormented by invisible demons; his suffering adds weight to a tale that is otherwise amusingly, at times stubbornly, lighthearted. No one, including Jacobina or Egbert’s two older sisters, fails to notice Piet’s allure. He is bright, talented, and ambitious, but he trusts those qualities less than he trusts his sexuality, which leads him to many enthusiastic encounters with women, including Jacobina, and men, and helps him slide haplessly into passivity. Mason (Natural Elements) writes with sensuality and humor, but the novel fails to deeply satisfy, especially at its forced and hollow end. Agent: Anderson Literary Management.

January 15, 2012
An ambitious young raconteur coaxes the passion out of a desiccated family in turn-of-the-century Amsterdam. British novelist Mason's latest (The Drowning People, 2005, etc.) teases out the eroticism in a 19th-century game of cat-and-mouse without succumbing to the cliches that might earn it a Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Of his cunning protagonist, Mason writes, "The adventures of adolescence had taught Piet Barol that he was extremely attractive to most women and to many men." He adds: "He was old enough to be pragmatic about this advantage, young enough to be immodest..." Piet is far more used to poverty and hardship than he is to the life of luxury in Europe's La Belle epoque. But he is above all ambitious and trained to navigate the world of privilege by his late mother. So it is that Piet infiltrates the household of Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, one of the wealthiest men in Amsterdam. Maarten's sex-starved wife Jacobina hires Piet to tutor their son Egbert, a boy who becomes hysterical outside his own home. Though playing a dangerous game--the image of a man walking a tightrope is threaded through the narrative--Piet loses no time in pursuing all pleasures, be it music, fine food, wealth or the charms of his employer's wife. Throughout the novel Mason displays a sharp eye and a wit to rival Oscar Wilde. A provocative and keenly funny portrait of a rake with an agenda all his own.

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September 15, 2011

Take one head-turningly handsome young man, put him in a leading bourgeois household in Amsterdam as a tutor during Europe's Belle Epoque, and what do you get? This new novel from the author of the award-winning The Drowning People and 2009's original and ambitious Natural Elements. This story of dashing Piet Barol's affair with the older woman who heads the household in which he works is at once windswept historical romance and focused social commentary. Good for a wide range of readers, and there's a reading group guide.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2011
In fictionalized early twentieth-century Amsterdam, Piet Barol, son of a middle-class paper-pusher, secures a job with the plush Vermeulen-Sickerts family as private tutor to a brilliant but cripplingly obsessive young boy. Progress with his pupil is slow, but hot baths, fine vestments inherited from the master of the house, and pointed attention from the master's wife soon have the handsome, charming, and absurdly lucky Piet employing the tastes instilled in him by his late, Parisian mother and assuming the high-society role he'd long planned for. Historical references aboundhotel tycoon Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts is deep into building a tony New York property, his first American venture, when the U.S. market collapsesand they are transporting and evocative. This bildungsroman is as smart as it is seductive, and seductionby finery, older women, successful men, and aged brandiesin the novel is rampant. Readers will savor final scenes aboard the gilded ocean-liner Eugenie and welcome the undercurrent that perhaps Piet's good fortune isn't luck at all but a lesson that pleasure exists for those who seek it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)