The Tree and the Vine

by Dola de Jong, Kristen Gehrman (Translator)

Overview

This courageous early work of lesbian fiction (1951) tells the gripping story of two women torn between desires and taboos in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Erica, a reckless young journalist, pursues passionate but abusive affairs with different women. Bea, a reserved secretary, grows increasingly obsessed with Erica —yet denial and shame keep her from recognizing her attraction. Only Bea’s discovery that Erica is half-Jewish and a member of the Dutch resistance—and thus very much in danger—brings her closer to accepting her own feelings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945492341
Publisher:	Transit Books
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Pages:	150
Sales rank:	326,721
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dola de Jong (1911-2003) was a Dutch-American writer. The Tree and the Vine, first published in 1951, is her best known work; she also won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for her mystery The Whirligig of Time, and the City of Amsterdam Literature Prize in 1947 for her novel And the Field Is the World. It was republished in 1979 under the title The Field.

Her other works included the children's books The Level Land (1943) and Return to the Level Land (1947), about a Dutch family caught up in the Nazi invasion.

Read an Excerpt

I met Erica in 1938 at the home of a mutual acquaintance—a superficial acquaintance, as far as I was concerned, and not someone I wanted to spend a lot of time with. Wies and I had spent six weeks next to each other in a hospital room, and our time together had not inspired me to get to know her any better. After a month and a half, I’d had my fill. Wies is the type of woman who, once she gets a fellow female to herself, casts a net of feminine solidarity, and the only way to escape is to run away as fast as you can, but that wasn’t an option for me at the time. She had thick skin, typical of her kind, and my lack of enthusiasm and feigned drowsiness only seemed to make her want to confide in me even more. After being released from the hospital two weeks before I was, she visited me often and brought flowers and treats.

I felt like I couldn’t completely ignore her after that, so every now and then I made a point to accept one of her many invitations. I had an aversion to offending people back then, not that I can blame myself for it—it was at her house that I met Erica. It was a warm summer evening, and I decided to ride my bicycle over to Wies’s to pay my obligatory visit. To be honest, I was hoping she wouldn’t be home, so I could just drop a note in the mailbox and my duty would be done. But as soon as I rang the doorbell, the door opened, and I found myself trapped once again.

Erica was lying on the couch next to the open balcony doors. When Wies introduced us, she seemed to hesitate for a moment as to whether or not to stand up. My outstretched hand decided for her; with an agile swing of the legs, she slid off the couch. I was attracted to her immediately and forgot all about the burden of my visit. Even now, after all these years, I still picture Erica gliding off the couch to take my hand. Her face was round and youthful, but she had the mouth of an older woman, as if the corners were being pulled to the ground. There was a penetrating, somewhat melancholic look in her eyes. She was wearing sandals, bright blue wool socks, a pleated skirt and a red sports blouse unbuttoned at the neck. Her blond hair had been cut short with a fringe poking out at the neck, which made her look like a boy in need of a haircut. She was, in short, dressed like a member of the Socialist Youth, a crowd I’d never felt very comfortable around. We had a couple of those girls at the office, and I stayed out of their way. But Erica seemed different. That first evening, I got the impression that she dressed this way because she was struggling to accept her own adulthood. Later on, I realized that her clothes were really just the simplest solution for a financial stalemate. But I don’t attach much value to that discovery anymore either.

That night, at Wies’s house, Erica’s life became part of my own. It was a chance encounter, and I have often wondered what my life would have been like if we’d never met. For a long time, I saw myself as a spectator, but I now know that I changed my course for Erica. Whether my life would have been better or happier without her—who knows? I certainly don’t.

Editorial Reviews

"Whereas Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, notoriously provided a lesbian romance with a happy, or at least hopeful, ending, The Tree and the Vine accomplishes something bolder: It normalizes its characters’ unhappinesses, showing them to be just as complicated as anyone else’s."—The New York Times

"A careful and muted lament about the sorrow of restraint."—The Wall Street Journal

“Silence lies at the heart of Dola de Jong’s The Tree and the Vine . . . A sharp and erotic domestic drama, sometimes comic yet darkened by the looming Nazi occupation.”—Julian Lucas, Harper’s Magazine

"Bea’s inability to face, let alone name, her true sexual desires drives this spare, elegant, and ultimately haunting novel . . . Gehrman’s beautiful new translation returns the book to the spotlight where it belongs . . . a jewel hidden in plain sight."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"A tight­ly plotted tour de force and a sig­nif­i­cant mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry nov­el, explor­ing les­bian desire and the nature of our shared human condition."—Jewish Book Council

“De Jong makes her narrator a real person, the plain woman over thirty, who does not want to recognize her nature and has brief, dutiful, joyless affairs with men. Therefore, she is always lonely; her little affections and pleasures will never change that. She is not aware of the barrenness of her existence. This silence, this refusal to see, is very touching, and is delicately rendered.”—V.S. Naipaul, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“This is a compelling little book, beautiful and sensitive. It is something one must read at a single sitting once it is begun, which is why this little gem had to be published.”—The Statesman

“This compelling novel allows us entry into a world in which the word lesbian is unspeakable and to be a Jew is unspeakably dangerous.”—Evelyn Torton Beck, editor of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology

“A masterful depiction of the love of two women, one of whom loves without understanding her own sensuality, while the other indulges in passions with little concept of love.”—Johan P. Snapper, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher

★ 2020-03-15
In pre–World War II Holland, a young woman struggles to understand her sexual identity.

Not long after they meet, Erica and Bea move in together. Erica, a young journalist, is impetuous, outgoing, even wild, while Bea, who narrates this novel, craves stability and security. She works as a secretary. War is overtaking much of Europe; soon, Germany will invade the Netherlands, where Bea and Erica live. A sense of threat pervades this short book that is partly attributable to the politics of the time—while Erica’s father is Jewish, her mother seems to have fascist sympathies (her parents are separated). For the most part, though, de Jong’s focus is narrower: As Bea acquires a male suitor with whom she carries on a lackluster relationship, it quickly becomes clear that there’s more between her and Erica than just friendship. It’s Bea’s inability to face, let alone name, her true sexual desires that drives this spare, elegant, and ultimately haunting novel. De Jong’s book was first published in Dutch in 1954, when it was considered radical for its choice of subject matter. Gehrman’s beautiful new translation returns the book to the spotlight where it belongs. Erica has romantic relationships with women that she is more and more open about, but Bea finds herself entangled in feelings of jealousy, obsession, anxiety, and—while she’s still dragging her boyfriend along—utter boredom. (The couple's treatment of each other is itself a marvel as they oscillate helplessly between kindness and cruelty.) The tension between what can be said and what must remain unsaid is pulled exquisitely taut: This is a high-wire act no one but de Jong could pull off.

There’s nothing simple about this deceptively spare novel—a jewel hidden in plain sight.

Kirkus Reviews