Erwin mortier biography

For me this was a less successful novel, although Mortier is my favorite Flemish writer. The author sketches the youth of the boy Joris Alderweireldt, first of all while he (as an adult) is looking at old photographs and tries to recall the past through them (hence the title ‘Shutter-time’). The book then develops into a story told by Joris himself, evocating more moments from his childhood. The setting is very reminiscent of the Flanders of Cyriel Buysse, a naturalistic Flemish writer from the beginning of the 20th century: the suffocating life in a little village, the stale Catholicism and its hypocrisy, the repressive atmosphere at school, and the contrast between the village and the French speaking castle-people. Mortier highlights the coming-of-age aspect by gradually revealing the precarious situation of Joris, who is raised by his uncle and aunt. And in a kind of epilogue there is a postmodernist twist, in which the older Joris sees himself in an amateur movie and we clearly notice that certain personal traits in the version Joris told (he pictures himself as a passive, lanky boy who undergoes bullying), perhaps were not completely truthfully. The book ends with a fairly macabre scene, that is not really convincing as an end note.

'Shu

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