Author Description

Pulling Stitches is a highly entertaining novel set in Amsterdam, around 1920. Joop, a working-class boy who has become a schoolteacher, looks back at his life and discovers that there always has been some sort of trouble with his clothes. He comes from a poor family, but like everyone, they fight hard to maintain decent clothes, because that was the only means of social survival.The story begins when Joop is about four years old, a small boy living with his parents, (his father is a shoemaker) in de Jordaan, a poor area of Amsterdam. Joop grows up to be a school boy, and after his father dies, he helps out with the shop, making deliveries. The book gives a first-hand insight in the life of ordinary people at that time, which also makes it a fascinating read: (from the book;)By the way, you are profoundly aware of your overall worthlessness when you are in Aunt Daatje's kitchen. At any moment, like a higher being from heaven, Madam can come down the somewhat creaking steps, and Aunt Daatje instructs you in a whisper how you should behave. Her normal conversation, whether everything is fine at home, whether the girls are doing well at school - her normal conversation is loud enough to pierce the loft floor; it even seems to be meant from time to time to be heard by Madam: 'Well, this week a good order again all together, your Mother should have more customers like that.'To which I answer, tactically, almost-shouting: 'That is right, Aunt!'But in between that loud conversation there are the whispered instructions, and they are doubly imposing because of that.'You can sit down for the time being, but remember that when Madam comes in, you get on your feet. You will hear the stairs creaking on time.' Shouting suddenly: 'Didn't I also order brown sugar?''Here, next to the rice, Aunt!' I shout back.'And then also...' she whispers again, but apparently cannot think of something that quickly regarding what else I should think about, and so she returns to the loud conversati