Beautiful smell and irresistible horrors in an excellent historical novel

Can a novel be nausea in a positive sense? Of course! Tooth hunterthe new novel by Auke Hulst, actually gave me gag. There was one page that I really couldn’t read with dry eyes, eh, mouth. And yet, even then, I wanted nothing more than to read. What a beautiful smell and a chilling horror rises out Tooth hunter!

Auke Hulst (1975), who is also a reviewer for this newspaper in addition to being a writer, excels in the mixing of his own raids and fascinations with all kinds of literary genres and traditions, which was already apparent from previous books, such as The Mitsukoshi Troostbaby Company (2021). He succeeds with it Tooth hunter Again in something extraordinary and surprising to adding so strikingly versatile oeuvre. Tooth hunter is an excellent historical novel and a chilling ‘gothic’ crek story in one. Moreover, you can also read a commentary on what people are doing, purely from self -interest, up to the present time. And on what people of all times do each other.

The protagonist is the Schelm Vos Jacobs, who also goes through life as ‘Jacobi Fox’, an unreal child who is determined to become a quarter of a dime. Deels als wraak – zijn biologische vader is (hoogstwaarschijnlijk) de baron van het landgoed waarop zijn ouders werken –, deels omdat het leven beter uit te houden is als je tot de elite behoort: „Hij wilde hun kleren dragen, in hun paleizen wonen, hun drank drinken, hij wilde bediend worden door hun bedienden en vergeten dat die bedienden zijn ouders waren, hij wilde de wereld zien vanuit hun koetsen en schepen, maar hij wilde niets van zijn binnenwereld hoeven offeren aan de dorre Spiritsteppe that is caused by habit and comfort.

After all kinds of wanderings and laps, Vos becomes a ‘tooth hunter’: he is robbed teeth of fallen soldiers that make rich people in England make a false teeth. He practices this special work on a foal head (one of the many passages from this book where it can be wise to keep a bucket handy).

Noble

In the meantime, his own teeth are also gone. That betrays his low descent. He has it replaced by a remarkably cool, shiny white roof teeth. That belonged to a noble young gentleman, also an important character in the novel, who because of his ideals for chose to abandon his title and inheritance and to serve in the army.

In addition to his teeth, Vos also takes a stack of love letters from his dead body, which are hidden in the clothes. He comes up with the idea, once successfully equipped with the shiny teeth, to decorate the worshiped Marquise from those letters. This Amsterdam aristocrate is a remarkably free -spirited, one -eyed painter. She is called a witch by the plebs, purely because of her views and appearance, you initially think. But there appears to be more going on: she has a big secret that I will not reveal here.

In any case, it is closely related to that other famous, somewhat older literary Marquise, the Markiezin De Merteuil Les Liasons Dangereuses (1782) Van Choderlos de Laclos. But she is even more dangerous. Is Vos as cunning as he thinks he is, or is she ultimately smarter?

Drek and drab, mud, courage and murder: you naturally hit alliterate with this novel, in which Hulst consistently full of the organ. He devotes over the « swampy smacking of tamped mud », but also about the sea, the air, the lifestyle of humans and animals. About light and dark, about fiddler animals and vegetation. Everything equally visual.

Tooth hunter begint op het slagveld bij Quatre Bras in 1815 daags voor de slag bij Waterloo, en neemt je vervolgens mee naar onder meer de sloppen van Londen, een suikerplantage in Suriname, de grachtengordel van Amsterdam en de woeste baren: „Regen en wind schuieren de zeilen, schuren de planken, slaan hout tot spaanders, de zee grauwt en gromt en blaft, een gulzige hond. De donder is die van het slagveld, Lightning refers to the visionary.  »

Literary examples

It is a compelling story, but especially the style – excessive, but nowhere awkward – makes a big impression. Hulst conjures up everything and is now playing a game with all kinds of literary examples: Cervantes, Dickens, Sterne and Shakespeare, to name just a few. He also chose an idiom for this book with words with disused words, in which he ensured that the context always makes clear what they mean. For example, he knows how to catch scents, colors, sounds and sensations highly original, which is a bit of a bit of a bit of work by Hafid Bouazza.

Rule over, or even more than that: taking possession of, another is the load -bearing theme of Tooth hunter. When is the relationship between two people symbiotic, when parasitic? Hulst works out in all sorts of ways. How men see women as their property. And parents their children. But also Veldersen their men, a landlord are tenants, a member of the nobility, the house staff and, more writer and more poignant, the white rulers the slaved black people in Suriname.

The other as a source abuse for their own existence, his own gain, is of course also the tooth mats alone. And then the at least partly partly involuntary exchange of all kinds of life juices, to blood, also plays a prominent role in Tooth hunter.

In the meantime, many of the characters strive for independence. For Vos, from an early age, a pole has been above water that is the highest good. To be free. Even in love he does not believe: « He has never believed in the mystical connectedness about which that one opium addicted poet had squeezed him in a London tavern – chatter, among others, who would trill with yours, about lips that shiver and burn with the best blood of your heart. »

But then, although he does not believe in it, his feeling is a spoke in the wheel. He falls in love and becomes his own surprise and relaxation, please withing skin and hair to deliver to the wife of his dreams, instead of the other way around. That will be a cold fair, in such a warm -blooded book.

« Do we continue to produce new books for days, such as mixing new brews by pharmacists, by tapping from one keg to the other? » At some point the question is in Tooth hunter. Hopefully Auke Hulst’s answer is for the time being, even after this great book, again: yes.

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