The Ditch
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
I played the scene back about ten times in my mind. First from start to finish, then from finish to start. In slow motion. Frame by frame. I tried to stop the action at the moment when my wife looked from me to the alderman. I corrected myself: avoided looking at the alderman.
Robert Walter, popular mayor of Amsterdam, suspects his wife is cheating on him. Then Robert’s elderly parents tell him that they’re planning to end their lives. His father hints that it will be sooner rather than later, but he won’t say when.
Alarmed, Robert starts to doubt himself and everyone around him, lost in increasingly panicked and paranoid trains of thought. But is it paranoia? Or is he actually seeing things clearly for the very first time?
The Ditch shows how quickly even the most stable lives can be sabotaged by secrecy and suspicion—and humans’ masochistic urge to undermine ourselves.
‘Herman Koch is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers. His three novels, taken together, are like a killer EP where every track kicks ass.’ Stephen King
‘Chilling, nasty, smart, shocking and unputdownable.’ Gillian Flynn on The Dinner
‘The Dinner is a riveting, compelling and deliciously uncomfortable read... both a punch to the guts and...a tonic. It clears the air. A wonderful book.’ Christos Tsiolkas on The Dinner
‘Blackly funny, full of sharp edges and hot issues, and compulsively readable. Verdict: feast on this.’ Herald Sun on The Dinner
‘The Dinner is a masterful, disturbing piece of theatre.’ Age/SMH
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The mayor of Amsterdam stumbles through a thicket of domestic dramas in the disappointing latest from Koch (Summer House with Swimming Pool). After mayor Robert Walter sees his wife, Sylvia, chatting amiably with an alderman at a New Year's reception, he becomes convinced they are having an affair. Robert goes on to spend many pages ruminating on whether Sylvia is cheating on him and what she and the alderman may or may not say or text to one another. Robert is a pleasant enough narrator, but his refusal to actually do much of anything (other than ponder) gets old quickly. Meanwhile, Robert's nonagenarian parents have decided on elective suicide, the timeline for which keeps shrinking; a reporter confronts Robert with damning evidence of alleged wrongdoing from his past (Robert's reaction is exceedingly hard to believe); and Robert's old friend faces a stark decision about his life. This comes across as a case of a narrator in search of a plot; some passages are real head-scratchers (anyone who has ever wondered about the recent history of Amsterdam's municipal glass recycling program is in for a treat) and the narrative's late tilt into metaphysical matters is ill-advised. Less definitely would have been more; hopefully Koch returns to form next time.
Customer Reviews
Double Ditch
Author
Dutch TV producer and a writer best known for ‘The Dinner’ (2009). If you haven’t read it, you should.
Plot
The Mayor of Amsterdam is one of the most important persons in The Netherlands, if not the world according to the protagonist, but has a few problems: wife’s presumed affair, aged but healthy parents seeking euthanasia (legal in The Netherlands), suitability if daughter’s BF, an underling at work who commits suicide after he’s dismissed for embezzling not very much, a reporter seeking to out the Mayor for youthful indiscretion, and so on. Doesn’t run again as Mayor, pursues wife to her (unnamed) country of origin, and achieves...not much really. Oh, and there’s a old university buddy / famous physicist battling with “a silicon chip inside his head that’s switched to overload.”
Narrative
First person by protagonist. Discursive style recognisable from previous Koch novels, but this is the most Dutch thing he’s written. Whether it’s an accurate picture of how Dutch people think and behave, I have no idea. Some amusing lines, just not enough of them, and definitely none like Bill Bryson gave us in ‘Neither Here Nor There’ (1992).
“Dutch sounds like nothing so much as a peculiar version of English... I presented myself at a small hotel...and asked the kind-faced proprietor if he had a single room. ‘Oh, I don’t believe so’, he said (in English), ‘but let me check with my wife.’ He thrust his head through a doorway of beaded curtains and called, ‘Marta, what stirs in your leggings? Are you most moist?’ From the back a voice bellowed, ‘No, but I tingle when I squirt.’ ‘Are you of assorted odours?’ ‘Yes, of beans and sputum.’ ‘And what of your pits – do they exude sweetness?’ ‘Truly.’ ‘Shall I suck them at eventide?’ ‘Most heartily!’ He returned to me wearing a sad look: ‘I’m sorry, I thought there might have been a cancellation, but unfortunately not.’”
Characters
Mayor is not very nice but you feel sorry for him at times. Wife and daughter get false names, and we don’t get any closer to the wife’s birth place than “somewhere southeast of Belgium.”
Bottom line
Double Ditch, or Dutch. Take your pick.