'A HEART OF STONE' Woman revisits troubled youth

An unusual set of events trigger a surprising ending to this book.
By THERESA HEGEL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"A Heart of Stone," by Renate Dorrestein; translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans (Viking $23.95).
Renate Dorrestein's "A Heart of Stone," is a multi-layered story, at once chilling and heartwarming. At first glance, these two descriptions seem mutually exclusive; however, Dorrestein manages to juxtapose a mood of horror with underlying themes of redemption and forgiveness without stooping to either gratuitous violence or cheap sentimentality.
The narrator, Ellen, is reflective. In an attempt to find some semblance of hope or just a satisfactory explanation, she looks back 25 years to the months preceding the tragedy that orphaned her and drastically reshaped her life. She buys her childhood home, and, armed with a photograph album that was long her only concrete tie to her past, remembers the events of her childhood, animating the still frames of the album.
Moving on: Ellen's quest to find truth has gained a particular urgency because of her pregnancy. She has reached a turning point in her life. After too many years of missed or squandered opportunities, Ellen realizes, albeit reluctantly, that she must embrace her past in order to banish those ghosts that still haunt her and move on with her life.
The novel navigates smoothly between that Ellen and Ellen as an exceedingly precocious, and thus slightly arrogant, pre-teen.
The young Ellen lives in the attic with her sister and two brothers. The rest of her family's house is overrun by the archives of her parents' news clipping agency, which specializes in Americana. As a result, Ellen and her siblings' lives are steeped in potato chips and colas, moon landings and movie quotations.
In many ways, Ellen's early life is idyllic. She has loving parents and close bonds with her siblings. However, her parents announcement of the impending arrival of a baby and her younger brother's disfiguring accident on Ellen's 12th birthday begin a cataclysmic chain of events that lead up to a horrific and startling climax.
The heart: The novel's title refers to Ellen's family's heart-shaped headstone as well as Ellen's own hardened heart. She describes her heart as that place "deep inside [her] chest, ... where it's always been dank and chilled" and as "a thing of stone." The recognition of this internal coldness brings Ellen one step closer to ultimate redemption.
"A Heart of Stone" is a powerful novel. The dynamics of Ellen's eccentric family life are captivating. The touching aspects of the book render its central scandal -- embedded in the warp and weft of this complex text but revealed fully only at the novel's end -- that much more shocking.
Awards: Dorrestein is already a celebrated novelist in Holland, with numerous titles under her belt. She has won several awards, and her novels often top the Dutch best seller lists. "A Heart of Stone" is her first work translated into English, but, with any luck, it will not be her last.