Dutch-born author Hans Brinckmann came to Japan in 1950, not as part of any occupying army, but as an employee of a bank. He remained here for 24 years, working his way up in the corporate world, then returned to Europe, where he spent the next 28 years. In 2002, after retiring from his banking career, he came back to Tokyo.

Finding himself with the time and wherewithal to write, Brinckmann produced a book of 2005 memoirs called “The Magatama Doodle.” “Noon Elusive,” his most recent work, is a collection of seven full-length short stories written from various points of view and set in several locations around the world. While this is a somewhat unorthodox approach for a book of short fiction, Brinckmann’s native intelligence, erudition and vast storehouse of experience makes it work.

The title story, which kicks off the collection, is narrated in the first person by a middle-aged American architect married to a British woman a few years his junior. The couple had one child rather late in life, and the boy, now 13, laments having parents in their 50s. The narrator, partly for business and partly to try to spice up his rather staid family situation back in London, takes an apartment in Paris. That’s where the story, a meditation on aging and the attempt to fend it off, largely unfolds.

While “Noon Elusive” has some humorous ironies — the architect is working on designs for restrooms for British Rail stations — some of the best lines reflect the narrator’s growing awareness of unwelcome change: “But lately my reflection in the mirror seems to live a life of its own, perversely oblivious to my real condition. Sometimes I hardly recognize myself: that dry, vein-shot skin, those pouches under the eyes. That thinning, wiry hair. None of that agrees with the image I have of myself….”

The next story, “The Parachutist,” is a third-person narrative set in a fictionalized Balkan country coming apart at the seams. As civil war divides the land along ethnic lines, a female ethnographer who is recording folk songs in “The Territory” witnesses an invasion of paratroopers from “The Regime.” But nothing nor anyone in this war-torn region are what they seem.

In “Staircase” the anonymous narrator endures a surrealistic ordeal after hiring a cleaner to come to his London apartment to vacuum dirt — and dirty secrets — from his tragic past. Brinckmann returns to the third person in “Twice Upon a Plum Tree,” the tale of a Dutch career diplomat who, following his divorce, is assigned to the embassy in Tokyo and meets the Japanese woman who had captured and broken his heart 30 years earlier.

In “The Trade-Off Man,” Henry Freeburgh is a famous New York heart surgeon who tries to live his life by evaluating his actions according to his self-devised “Trade-Off Principle.” “Increasingly Henry let the ‘statistical’ outcome of his evaluations dictate his behavior,” the narrator tells us, “…while continuing his search for the elusive synthesis between morality and carnal desire.”

This “elusive synthesis” is also the obsession of Berthold, an innovative British undertaker, the seemingly un-heroic hero of “Way Out Blues,” who decides to quit his job at the pinnacle of success in order to join a New Age cult.

The final story, “An Unfortunate Incident,” takes the form of a dramatic monologue by a rich American businessman who has killed a young South Asian violin prodigy with his car while swerving to avoid a head-on collision with another car — an expensive Jaguar.

While the stories in “Noon Elusive” cover the globe, a recurring theme is the ambiguity of the choices people make in search of a moral imperative. Most of the characters make tragic errors of judgment, but none are completely villainous, and all believe themselves to be — or to have been — good people. Brinckmann’s measured tone, understated humor, and slightly Dutch inflections on the English language make this book a delightful, yet thought-provoking read. Welcome back, Mr. Brinckmann!

0 Comments

Register or login to add a comment!