After brother’s death he had to abandon university and start working on the family farm. Their closeness and almost proverbial for twins intimacy dissolved and Helmer became half a twin. Henk met Rita and when she entered his life Helmer landed on the scrap heap. And he had a twin brother, Henk, but he lost him, and it happend even earlier before the latter died for real. He had plans, he had studied at Amsterdam, he had ambitions to become someone else but tragic accident destroyed all his dreams.

Helmer, now fifty something farmer, is trying to get a grip on his own life. Minimalistic, quiet and subtle story orchestrated for barely few persons. Omdat hij tijdens zijn studie Nederlands nogal wat aan etymologie had gedaan, en eerste pogingen tot het schrijven van kinderboeken faliekant mislukten, besloot hij een etymologisch woordenboek voor kinderen te gaan schrijven. In juli 2006 sloot hij die opleiding succesvol af en vanaf dat moment is hij - als 'vakbekwaam hovenier' - in te huren voor tuinontwerp en -onderhoud. Van 19 was hij ondertitelvertaler, waarbij hij een voorkeur ontwikkelde voor natuurfilms die vrijwel allemaal in scène gezet worden: na een flink aantal documentaires zag hij regelmatig dezelfde beelden terugkomen.Īangezien die kwarteeuw school blijkbaar nog niet voldoende was, begon hij in september 2003 een avondopleiding tot hovenier aan de Groene Campus in Alkmaar. Heeft van 19 'op school' gezeten: kleuterschool lagere school havo vwo agogische akademie in Leeuwarden en Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde aan de universiteit van Amsterdam. Gerbrand Bakker werd geboren op 28 april 1962 in Wieringerwaard, als derde zoon in een boerengezin van zeven kinderen. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm? Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. ‘A double bed and a duvet’, advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.Īfter his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. When Henk’s twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm.

Twin word writer