The Ditch

April 1, 2019
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.

April 1, 2019
How can the mayor of Amsterdam possibly think of running a city when his wife may be cheating on him and his parents are planning to kill themselves? Robert, the narrator of Koch's fourth novel translated into English (Dear Mr. M, 2016, etc.), is a little obsessed and on edge. A New Year's party brings official chatter about managing soccer fans and the impact of a visit by President Barack Obama, but Robert has his eyes trained on his wife, Sylvia, who he suspects is having an affair with an alderman. On what evidence? Nothing but her laughing as the alderman "had his hand on her elbow and was whispering something in her ear." But paranoia has an easy grip on Robert's dark temperament, as it often does in Koch's fiction; much of the novel turns on Robert's searching his memory for proof of Sylvia's disaffection. And the bleakness metastasizes: Did he hasten the suicide of a staffer caught embezzling? Should he intervene on his parents' plans to soberly kill themselves? ("Not right away," his nonagenarian father tells him. "In September or October. Autumn, a nice time of year for a double funeral.") A Paris trip with Sylvia does nothing to alleviate his anxiety, and he grows determined to "be the mole in my own life"; as the story presses on, threads about mortality, murder, and Robert's past history of alleged violence begin to connect. The connection is an awkward one, though. Koch has crafted a pitch-perfect tone for a man consumed by jealousy, which in part demands some digression and ranting. But longueurs about trash-pickup policies and wind power are distracting, even as they intend to reveal Robert's distractedness, and dampen the impact of the (somewhat) revealing final chapters. A shadowy tale of the power of projection that's swamped by the narrator's rambling nature.

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June 1, 2019

Robert Walter, the mayor of Amsterdam, is happily married to Sylvia (not her real name), who is from an unnamed foreign country. They have one daughter, Diana (also not her real name). At a New Year's party, Robert sees his wife laughing with one of his colleagues and immediately assumes that the two are having an affair. To confirm his suspicions, Robert becomes hypervigilant while trying to maintain a veneer of normalcy. Meanwhile, his 90-year-old parents tell him that they have decided to die by suicide rather than burden him with their inevitable decline, and best friend Bernard reveals that he has a terminal illness and also intends to die by suicide. Then a journalist interviewing Robert claims she's been given a tip that Robert was the perpetrator of a vicious crime in his youth. How much of this is true, and how much is the wild imaginings of an overtaxed mind? Readers will struggle with unanswered questions about the underlying truth even as the impact of emotions that may have run amok is juxtaposed with the possibility that Robert has figured it all out. VERDICT Koch (The Dinner) creates a story open to interpretation that will appeal to readers who enjoy an unresolved mystery.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2019
In his second term as mayor of Amsterdam, Robert Walter begins to feel a sense of unease. At a New Year's reception, he sees his attractive foreign-born wife, Sylvia, laughing at something Alderman Maarten Van Hoogstraten says; and when he joins them, the alderman abruptly leaves. Later, at the funeral of the city manager, with Sylvia and Van Hoogstraten sitting on opposite sides of the chapel, Walter looks up from remarks he's making to find them both gone. Suspicions growing about an illicit relationship, Walter becomes particularly attentive to changes in Sylvia's behavior, as habits of hers that he once found reassuring, such as her light snoring, become irritating. At the same time, he learns from his 94-year-old father that he and his mother plan to meet death on their own terms, and his close friend, renowned physicist and astronomer Bernhard Langer, confides about his illness. Tension builds about what popular politician Walter will do regarding his wife, as his heightened awareness causes changes in his own behavior. A compelling exploration by a master stylist of what jealousy and distrust can do even to a solid relationship.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)