 Man, I got this, sorry y'all, I don't see any rainbows. I got this LED circle light thing to brighten up the videos. I don't think it's doing a very good job. Y'all let me know what you think down in the doobly-doo. Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we're talking about the Ditch by Herman Koch. Am I? I'm close, aren't I? I'm trying to work out this new light situation. I'm probably going to have to send this one back to get something else. I don't know. Y'all let me know. I'll check it out in the editing. Maybe it looks better. Someone was complaining about the shadows. They couldn't see my eyes. I literally had this thing directed right at my face and it's still, yeah, there's still shadows. I'm sorry. I don't know. I guess I'm just dark. I shouldn't know. I'd say dark and sinister, but that ain't none of me. Anywho. Today we're talking about the Ditch. Herman Koch is one of my favorite authors. He's a Dutch author. His translations are superb. I'm not sure who did this one. Let me check real quick. I believe it's the same guy that does all of his. Sam Garrett. I have the rest of them over there. I'm not going to get them out, but I'm pretty sure Sam Garrett did the rest of them if I'm wrong, whatever. Let me know down there in the doobly-doo. In fact, a little side story. For the longest time I thought the guy was either Norwegian or Swedish or something like that, but he wasn't. Of course, he's Dutch. I remember the review. The person came on and said, I don't mean to offend you, but he's actually Dutch. I'm like, offend me? Why would I be offended? I mean, if he's Dutch, he's Dutch. The truth is the truth. Anyways, we're talking about The Ditch, his latest novel. I did not like this up until the last couple pages. If you guys remember a review for Perfume by Patrick Zusskind, I don't know. You guys know, if you're a fan of the channel, I always screw up the names of authors, but names of anybody, really. But with this one, this one was far more boring and uneventful and meandering than any of other Koch's works that I've read so far. Also I just found out today there's five other novels that he hasn't had translated yet, and I'm feeling kind of angry and like I need to go learn Dutch so I can get those books. If there's any Dutch fans or anybody out there who's read the other five books, let me know if they're any good, not Dutch fans. If there's any Koch fans who have read the other five books that are only in Dutch, please let me know what you think of them. I don't know what I'll be able to do with that information, but let me know if they're worthwhile or if he just started to become, I guess, good enough to be translated. It's where I'm going with that. With all that being said, the book's fantastic if you can make it to the end and you understand the ending. I went and I looked at some of the reviews, especially the low star reviews, because I was wondering why I'd only had a three star average on Goodreads, and most of the people there said, I'm not putting words in their mouth, they said themselves they didn't understand the ending. So I'm going to leave that there with them. I'm not going to comment trying to explain to anybody because the last thing I need, oh my God, they're my explainer and they didn't ask for my opinion, so I'm not going to give it. But most of the lower star ratings over there have to do with people not understanding what happened. And I'm kind of shocked because I saw what was happening early on. We're going to give this spoiler discussion in just a second and then we'll talk about it there. I saw what was happening and I'm not sure how you could miss it. But we're going to go into that, we're going to discuss it because it's one of the reasons why the book is so lowly rated. Rated lowly? Whatever. Anyways, so I did enjoy the book, I ended up giving it four stars. I think I've given most of his books four stars, but this is now one of my favorites other than Dear Mr. M, which is my favorite. The dinner is probably my least favorite from him. The reasoning for that is he doesn't hold the reader's hand. He doesn't, there's a lot of information that he sprinkles throughout the book that I honestly believe he's trying to bore you. He's trying to get you to take your mind and your thoughts off of what is actually going on with the plot. Which the size of the testicles on this dude must be immense because to do something like that with a 306, 308 page book, and to only get to the plot about page 175 is insane to me. In fact, the opening section, actually I don't know if I'll even mention that in the spoiler section because it literally I think ruins the book for people. So I won't even mention what I wanted to say about the front of the book. The tone here is very blasé, there's some terrible shit going on in the background and the narrator is neurotic, he's paranoid, all this great stuff, but it's also really boring because he's a mayor, he lives a pretty boring life. He talks about windmills all the time, not all the time, but he talks about his more centrist conservative politics while he's in a liberal country. So that was interesting to read that point of view from that character. I don't know that it's Koch's point of view of course, I didn't feel like it was author intrusion. I felt like it was more along the lines of the character's thoughts, but I could be wrong about that. Herman Koch may be conservative, I have no idea. But the section about the windmills I found very interesting because that's when I started to realize that there's something going on that he's not telling us. There's something that I believe fully that he is taking our minds off something else and giving him this huge fucking red herring. Another thing is, I probably just need to go into the spoilers section because from here on out all I really have to talk about are the spoilers because I almost went into a spoiler again. That's the problem with this book and my ring light just died. So maybe it wasn't that good of a product anyways. Y'all stay away from this company, ZEC Pro, Z-E-K Pro, my wife is on Snapchat a lot, she gets a lot of products for review. This one ain't getting that good, it won't even come on anymore, it's dead y'all. Rip ZEC Pro light in the chat. Anyways. So now we're going to go into the outro and then if you guys know how I do if you're a fan of the channel, after the outro there's going to be spoiler stuff. So until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another book review, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye. Okay so what happened at the end was the whole book is something to take your attention off of the fact that the entire theme of the book is the title, the ditch. It's about people ditching people, at least that's what I took from it. If the ditch, if the Dutch translation for the ditch doesn't have the same two meanings as the English version of ditch then we need to discuss that down there because it seemed like there were a lot of people ditching a lot of people in this book. So that felt like the theme of the book to me because his wife ditches him, his father ditches him, his father ditches his mother which is a huge section of the book. So I feel like it was a central theme, the ditching of a person, the leaving behind of a person, not just the last chapter where he's talking about looking down on the ditch and finding, I think who was it, his wife's parents in the ditch, but I can't remember that part. Or maybe it was just some, no I think it was a famous couple in that town. But what I thought was brilliant is throughout the entire story he's taking your mind off of the fact that, well he's mentioned that this dude's parents are going to kill themselves. And he's mentioned throughout the entire thing that this is going to happen. You know it's coming to pass, there's nothing he can do about it because in Holland it's legal to, suicide is legal. The ending, well of course you know what suicide is, the ending in one's life. But Euthanasia, that's legal if you're terminating it, all that kind of thing, you can choose to die. I'm not sure if you can just choose to die, but I mean if you do it improperly I don't think there's any penalty for trying to commit suicide. Especially since his father doesn't. Well his father survives the suicide, the parents are wanting to kill, the father talks about wanting to kill themselves together so they don't have to grow old and suffer, which we'll get to that in a second. But only the wife dies and the husband, the father of the main character who's 90 something. He survives and he ends up buying a new sports car and running off with some chick with a red handkerchief and all the different kinds of stuff goes on. But it was right at the point when I realized that the main character had, I think his name is Robert, had never talked to his mother about this suicide pact that she supposedly had with their father that I thought what if the, and that's before they even died. I was like what if the father's just like saying this so he can murder the wife. And then after the wife is dead the main character starts bringing up the how he must have ordered the car beforehand because it was like I don't know if it was a limited edition sports car but it was the kind of car that you have to order ahead of time kind of like a Ferrari kind of deal. So there was that. I'll drop in all these little clues but also before that even happened I'm like why haven't you talked to your mother about this? So I caught that twist. Now the twist with the wife and the man that she was having an affair with, I'm almost positive that it was because she was, something had happened between them off camera and because the book is written in first person that we are never told why she did this. So I'm not entirely sure there what the motivation was but I mean that's what happened at the end was the wife and her brother either attempted to murder her lover or it's something, well not, or they beat him up really bad you know it's one of the other there. Of course he doesn't talk about it, he has a selective amnesia kind of deal but so that was pretty obvious. Now as far as the motivations I'm not 100% sure on the motivations but once again the book is written in first person and the only thing that we're going to, the only thing we're going to get in first person is the unreliable narrator's point of view or the narrator's point of view if it's not unreliable. That's my take on it, some of that stuff is accurate and some of that stuff is my speculation like the theme being the ditch, you know she ditched him, dad ditched mom, all this ditching going on. I would love to know if the connotation, I have no idea how to even look that up in Dutch if the word for ditch literally means you know hole in the ground and mean to leave someone behind. So I'm not sure there but definitely what happened is you know the wife and the brother end up fucking up the one dude and then his, the main character's father murdered his mother to go away. Now the irony, well the best part, the best part for me of the whole book that really sealed the deal and I was like holy shit four stars, I might have even given it five had I not been so bored with the front matter was the realization that there at the end the father ended up having Alzheimer's. So he'd made it the story to kill himself and his wife only for, well the story was they didn't want to get old and suffer old age and then he ends up getting Alzheimer's before he dies and that I thought was just a fantastic you know comeuppance. Just the kind of thing that Gone Girl, that the ending of Gone Girl didn't give me, that kind of recompense. But what did you think about Herman Koch's The Ditch? I'm almost worried to ask because there's so much hate around this book. Also I probably should have put this in the front section but it's whatever. But yeah if you guys have read it, I hope so if you're here at the end of the video or maybe you didn't even have any want to read the book at all and just wanted to watch the whole video, who knows. But if you're here and you've read it, let's talk about it down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.