The ascent

Hertmans' (The Convert, 2020) latest novel, like Juan Gabriel Vásquez's Retrospective (2023), manifests as what might be called fictional nonfiction, in which the author enhances research compiled from documents and interviews with imagined depth and color. Hertmans evinces a rock-solid sense of place, and it is through location that he approaches his subjects. Discovering that he lived in a house in Ghent formerly owned by a Nazi collaborator, he experienced "the powerful pull of an unknown life" and set out to investigate. Through a series of anecdotes, he tells the story of Willem Verhulst, a one-eyed, womanizing "charmer" who begins with Flemish nationalism, slides into working for Nazi-run Radio Flanders, and ends up as a member of the SS. His mortified, long-suffering wife, "burdened with an extremely logical mind" and devoutly Christian, suffers undeserved consequences both before and after her husband's transgressions finally catch up to him. Hertmans' impressionistic prose is deeply evocative, and the novel reads like a fascinating conversation, drawing on the storyteller's absorption with his subject matter and intimate knowledge of the characters involved.

Flemish Belgian writer Hertmans (The Convert) delivers a thoughtful and unflinching narrative in which he imagines the life of his Ghent home's previous owner, who was an SS officer. Hertmans purchased the mildew-covered house as a young man in 1979. In 2000, he discovered it was formerly occupied by Willem Verhulst and his family. Recreating the lives of the Verhulst family during the grisly period of Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1945 and beyond, Hertmans chronicles how Willem becomes a high-ranking Nazi informant, traces his exploits as a Flemish nationalist rabble rouser after WWII, and explores his romantic attachments--particularly to his Jewish first wife, Elsa, who died in 1926, and with whom he requested to be buried. The most fascinating character is Mientje, Verhulst's second wife and the mother of his children, who despises the SS, but loves her husband, despite his affair with devoted Nazi Griet, whom he marries after Mientje's death. Hertmans adds nuance by drawing on interviews with Verhulst's daughters Letta and Suzanne, now in their 80s, and the memoirs of Verhulst's son, Adriaan, who was Hertmans's history professor in the 1970s. Images of Elsa's death certificate and other documents, along with excerpts from various letters and journals, convey the depth of the author's immersion. In Hertmans's hands, the dusty rooms of history come alive. (Aug.)

The stories of a Belgian "Jew-hunter for the Waffen-SS," his family, and their home are reassembled through a combination of historical fact and the author's imagination. "In the first year of the new millennium, a book came into my hands from which I learned that for twenty years I had lived in the house of a former SS man." So begins Flemish author Hertmans' coolly intriguing re-creation of the life and circumstances of Willem Verhulst, whose commitment to Flemish Nationalism led to an allegiance with Hitler and the German Reich. Son of a "Bad" Fleming, the book that revealed the house's connection to the Nazis, was written by Verhulst's son, Adriaan, and lends much detail on the father's shameful story, as do various other sources, including the diaries of Adriaan's mother, Mientje, and the reminiscences of his two sisters. Verhulst's early life is quirky but inauspicious. The sight in one of his eyes is damaged in a convulsion. He studies horticulture in Brussels and takes a Jewish lover, Elsa Meissner, marrying her before her divorce is complete. Elsa succumbs to cancer, but before she dies Verhulst is already flirting with devout Mientje, who, as wife No. 2, will suffer worse from her husband's promiscuity. Resident in Ghent but often absent, Verhulst's politics align him so that when war begins and the Germans invade Belgium, he's happy to work for the occupiers and reap the benefits. Hertmans precisely locates Verhulst in the Ghent house, where Mientje forbids him to wear his SS uniform indoors though a bust of Hitler sits on a mantelpiece. His crimes are more outlined than specified, but the mood and the corruption are nicely mirrored in the rotting, tainted house Hertmans later buys and inhabits. As much a story of the family and the setting as of the horrible yet ludicrous figure at its center, the book, while overlong, delivers a haunting, detailed record of people, place, and atmosphere. A ghostly evocation of faded but eternally repulsive history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the first year of the new millennium, a book came into my hands from which I learned that for twenty years I had lived in the house of a former SS man. Not that I hadn't received any signals; even the notary, the day I visited the house with him, had mentioned the previous occupants in passing, but at the time my thoughts were elsewhere. And maybe I repressed the knowledge, saturated as I had been for years with the harrowing poems of Paul Celan, the testimonies of Primo Levi, the countless books and documentaries that leave you speechless, the inability of a whole generation to describe the unthinkable. Now I saw my intimate memories invaded by a reality I could scarcely imagine, but could push away no longer. It was as if phantoms haunted the rooms I'd known so well; I had questions for them, but they walked straight through me. There was nothing I was so loath to do as write about the kind of person who now began wandering the corridors of my life like a ghost. I recalled the day I noticed the house for the first time. It must have been in the late summer of 1979. I was walking through a dusty city park bordered by a row of old houses; through the gaps between the fence posts I glimpsed the backyards. Winding through the rusty rails of one of these fences were the thick, near-black branches of a wisteria. A few late clusters of flowers hung low, sprinkled with dust, but their fragrance touched a deep place, taking me back to the overgrown garden of my childhood; curious, I stopped for a better look through the fence. What I saw was a small, neglected urban garden where a slender maple shot up among nondescript clutter; a coal shed with a little leftover firewood under a layer of black dust; some sixteen feet away, the broken window of a rundown annex; and next to that a porch with a high arched window offering a view of the interior, all the way to the other side. I stared straight through the dark, empty rooms. The front windows gleamed with vague light from afar. A strange excitement ran through me; I walked out of the park and made a U-turn onto a small, dark street in an old part of town. There I found it: a large town house with a pockmarked front, into which mois­ture had eaten its way over time. With its high windows and flaking front door, the building had known better days; it was obvious it had been vacant for some years. In one window hung a sign, for sale, wrinkled from the damp. It began to drizzle as it can only drizzle in old cities; the copper flap of the mail slot gave a brief, gloomy rattle in a gust of wind. The district is called Patershol, named after the narrow canal that gave access to the monastery in the Middle Ages, through which the paters , the monks, would bring in stocks of food and, as the story goes, smuggle whores inside. The area once belonged to the Counts of Flanders; this historic district is next to a twelfth-century fortress and was for centuries the home of the city's leading dynasties and the haute bourgeoisie. With the rise of the proletariat in the nineteenth century, many stately build­ings were replaced with working-class housing. Poverty set in, and over the years the district developed a bad reputation. The narrow alleyways and cul-de-sacs fell into decay until the student revolt of the late 1960s, when bohemian artists settled there. The house I was looking at was on the northeastern edge of the district, on a side street called Drongenhof, not far from where the slow, dark Leie River--the Belgian section of the Lys--flows past the damp old houses. Excerpted from The Ascent: A House Can Have Many Secrets by Stefan Hertmans All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.