Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1214634 in Books
• Published on: 1984-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 468 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review

This isn't the beginning. It's the end of your diary. I sneaked into your room and searched through the drawers in your desk until I found it. I smuggled the diary out, opened it, and leafed through it until I came to the first blank page, and now I've started to write. No, I haven't read what you've written. Really I haven't. Honestly not. There's probably a law against reading someone else's diary without permission. Maybe there's also a law against writing in someone else's diary. But I'm doing it anyway.

Six months after Luke's younger brother Marius died, their mother decides to hold a symbolic bonfire of all his possessions. Upset by the finality of her gesture, Luke decides that the only way to save his brothers diary is for him to start writing in it too, to fill in the blank pages and to make it more his than Marius's.

While filling the second half of the diary with the thoughts that he cannot share with his parents, Luke's curiosity becomes too great and he begins to read the text left by his brother. As the story progresses Luke reads the diary and discovers that he and Marius had more in common than he could have imagined, while his entries become his way of communicating to his brother the things they never said when they were both alive.

As he learns more about his brother, Luke begins to accept his own sexuality and comes closer to finding an answer to the question that tortures him: is he still a brother if there is no longer anyone left for him to be a brother to?

Brothers is a moving, skilfully written and poignant story about the voids which can exist even between family members and the tragedy of letting our differences divide us from those who should be closest to us. --Rachel Ediss

From the Publisher
Prasied in an excellent review in The Observer "Too much children's fiction lies by omission. When dealing with tricky subjects such as death, sexuality and family relationships, it prettifies the emotions and offers unlikely messages of hope. Not this book: it is hard as a bone and all the better for it"

Customer Reviews

Achingly Beautiful
It's not often that it happens, but I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting - one long emotional sitting. This award-winning book is magnificently crafted, wholly original and incredibly moving.

It is written in the first person as entries in the same diary by two brothers - Marius, the 14 year old diary owner who died 6 months previously, and Luke, his grieving 16 year old brother. When their mother announces that she is going to burn all of Marius's belongs on what would have been his 15th birthday, Luke rescues the diary he had gifted his sibling and appends his own entries to make the diary his own and thus rescue it from the fire. Since Luke was helpless to save his brother's body, he finds it unbearable that he could now also lose Marius's thoughts. Luke initially only adds his own entries at the rear of the diary, but gradually he reads those that had been written by Marius. When so many of them are about his idolisation of his older brother, Luke writes replies to them, and a poignant conversation between the two boys follows - one dead, one struggling with being alive and brotherless.

What follows is an astonishingly powerful read, filled with grief, guilt and all the words unspoken before the boy's death. It is achingly beautiful. Van Leishout has crafted a work dripping with poetic language and incredible originality. Reminiscent of the autobiographical works of Paul Monette, many sentences demand to be re-read, pondered and wept over. It is heart-breaking and heaves with enormously moving prose. If the entry written by Luke about the last time he saw Marius alive doesn't draw huge rasping sobs from your throat then stop classing yourself as a human being.

Some reviewers have highlighted the gay and teen themes, but to me this extraordinary book is primarily about grief and love and is a 'must read' for absolutely anyone who loves their literature with substance, irrespective of their sexuality or age.

It richly deserves the awards and accolades showered upon it. It will stay with me for a very long time indeed.

One of the best and most inspiring books I've ever read.
Brothers, what can I say about this book other than that I recommend every person I know to read it and as yet all who have taken up my advice agree with me on it being exceptional. It tells the tragic and yet uplifting story of the pseudo-fictional Bindel family as they are washed through the uncontrollable tides of 19th and 20th century anti-semitism of first Eastern and later Western Europe. I didn't really know much about this book when it was recommended to me, apart from that it had a Jewish theme and, fresh from reading Exodus and Mila 18, these were severe yardsticks for it to follow. If those two books mean anything to you then you will appreciate how highly I rate this book when I say its on a a par and maybe even surpasses them. Its truly special and I would urge anyone with any interest in this area to read it and, for those who don't, you will afterwards.

A sensitive, moving, and empathetic read
I really enjoyed this title. The author really seems to get into the mind of the main characters and the themes of death and homosexuality are both dealt with with sensitivity and touching accuracy. I loved the different approach of the book - a brother writing speaking to his dead sibling through a 'borrowed' diary - it worked well.

The style makes the book readable, whilst at the same time you really feel like you've gained something after reading. Maybe this should be compulsary reading in schools! This is a book I will keep.