Bonita Avenue

Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda                               536 pages 

Translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Reeder

I tried three times to read this book, but I never could figure out a) what it was about and b) who was talking. One minute Siem was talking, on the next page he was dead. The plot never engaged me; The furtherest I ever got was 100 pages, after that I couldn't remember what had happened in the first 50 pages. So if you are looking for a synopsis, I’ll have to give you the one I pulled from Amazon:

Siem Sigerius is a beloved, brilliant professor of mathematics with a promising future in politics. His family—including a loving wife, two gorgeous, intelligent stepdaughters and a successful future son-in-law—and carefully appointed home in the bucolic countryside complete the portrait of a comfortable, morally upright household. But there are elements of Siem's past that threaten to upend the peace and stability that he has achieved, and when he stumbles upon a deception that’s painfully close to home, things begin to fall apart. A cataclysmic explosion in a fireworks factory, the advent of internet pornography, and the reappearances of a discarded, dangerous son all play a terrible role in the spectacular fragmentation of the Sigerius clan.

A riveting portrait of a family in crisis and the ways that even the smallest twists of fate can forever change our lives, Bonita Avenue is an incendiary, unpredictable debut of relationships torn asunder by lies, and minds destroyed by madness.

I received this book from Blogging for Books