Comedy in a Minor Key

by Hans Keilson

A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation—and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners—Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, then must dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia. This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best: deeply ironic, penetrating, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern, an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany’s prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring “the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications.”

Published to celebrate Keilson’s hundredth birthday, Comedy in a Minor Key — and The Death of the Adversary, reissued in paperback — will introduce American readers to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, Holocaust, World War II, German Literature, Germany

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Hans Keilson is the author of Comedy in a Minor Key and The Death of the Adversary. Born in Germany in 1909, he published his first novel in 1933. During World War II he joined the Dutch resistance. Later, as a psychotherapist, he pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. In a 2010 New York Times review, Francine Prose called Keilson a “genius” and “one of the world’s very greatest writers.” He died in 2011 at the age of 101.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/hanske...

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one is my neighbour, but I can make myself the neighbour of another by my actions.
(Simone de Beauvoir)

Going into hiding was one of the first aspects from the Shoah that came to my attention when I was a child, because of the diary of Anne Frank.

As a German Jew who fled to the Netherlands in 1936 and went into hiding himself in Delft in 1941, Hans Keilson (1909-2011) could draw from his own experiences telling this gripping story on a young Dutch couple concealing a Jewish man for a year in a room on the first floor of their house in a provincial town in the Netherlands.

When Wim and Marie are asked to hide ‘Nico’, a Jewish man in his forties, they do all what is necessary. Intelligent, sensible and cautious, they live a regular life, in a gentle routine of work, meals and household chores. While at first they observe complete secrecy and silence, they soon find out they need others who willing and able to help or turn a blind eye – family members, the doctor, members of the resistance, a police officer. All three are waiting and hoping for the liberation to come soon and put an end to the situation, but from the first chapter Keilson reveals that the end for Nico will come differently - through the wrong door of illness, giving the story its wryly ironic title, referring to a revolving door comedy.

Keilson’s writing is dainty and evocative of the minor and major troubles and challenges the unusual situation of isolation and danger presents for the couple and Nico. Reflecting on the motives of Wim and Marie, Keilson lays out that their humanity goes beyond duty or patriotism, or Christian mercy with the persecuted. He subtly conveys the confusion and emotional maelstrom haunting the trio and the impact of the risks and of Nico’s presence and decease on Wim and Marie as a couple. They can offer Nico relative protection and safety, but are powerless facing his need for solace, his loneliness and wretchedness now he is imprisoned and separated from everything that connected him to life. Marie deeply senses the conflicting moods Nico is tossed about, his feelings of guilt, despair, unease and anger because of helplessness and the feeling of being a burden and of course the relentless fear:

She had seen fear: the terrible helpless fear that rises up out of sadness and despair and is no longer attached to anything— the helpless fear that is tied only to nothingness. Not fear or anxiety or despair about a person or a situation, nothing, nothing, only the exposure, the vulnerability, being cast loose from all certainties, from all dignity and all love.

Comedy in a minor key is a simple, unsentimental but affecting story on the human capability to proffer solidarity and bravery in extreme, morally complex and perilous times. What truly mattered in those frightful war circumstances were no grand statements or pompous display of idealistic ostentation but no-nonsense acting, doing the right thing when an ethical dilemma emerges on one’s path. Outlining the difficulties Nico, Wim and Marie have to deal with, Keilson shows that is not so much individual heroism but the uniting of the small acts of many that can put up a barrier against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

More facts and figures about going into hiding in the Netherlands can be found on the website of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.



Arie Bakker and Evy Beer , a Dutch couple which concealed at least eleven Jews in their house in Delft, all of them survived. Hans Keilson had a relationship with one of them, Hanna Sanders.

[Jaidee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 " intriguing, lacking, more please " stars !!

Hans Keilson was a psychotherapist who worked with children with traumas. His novel Comedy in a Minor Key was published in 1947 and I believe translated into English in 2010 to honor his 100th birthday. In 2008 he was honored with the German Welt literature prize.

This novella is described as a black comedy. A young dutch couple take in a middle aged Sephardic Jew and hide him in their home during the Second World War. This is not a spoiler...the Jewish man dies in their home. What are they to do ??

I felt mixed about this book as parts of it were insightful, almost brilliant and other sections felt like a dated, stale 1950's stage play. I found very little funny and I found the characters not that well drawn out or specific. It is interesting that the author is compared to Kafka as I felt very similarly about his (supposed) masterpiece The Metamorphosis.

However, there were two or three sections that I found moving, brilliant and thought provoking and in the end this had much more impact on me than the mediocre sections. I will leave you a small section of the writing so that you get a flavor of it.

" In her grief at his death, which broke through fully for the first time now that her fear was gone, there was mixed in a feeling of happiness, of satisfaction, that someone had found him and that nothing more could happen to him now. They would be alone again within the four walls of their house, just like before. Maybe a new guest would come but he, Nico, would never be standing at the top of the stairs again, waiting for someone to bring him his newspaper. He would never have to wait for anything again. He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within. It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge onstage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left. Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience. They feel that the play did turn out a bit sad after all, at the very end. We thought he would enter from the right..."

In the end I am very glad I read this novella but I just needed and wanted more of the great and less of the mediocre !!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Go google Hans Keilson. No, I’m not kidding. Go read his Wikipedia entry or one of the articles that come up about him and then come back to this review. Yeah. That’s a pretty crazy life history, right? Sort of makes you want to read his book even if it’s horrible. Good news: the book’s not horrible. In fact, I’d even say The New York Times wasn’t exaggerating when they called this book a masterpiece. During WWII, a young couple hides a Jewish man in their home and all is going well until he dies of natural causes and they have to dispose of the body. This German translation is short – the edition I read clocked in at under 140 pages – but it packs a punch. It’s deceptively simple (excluding some subtle jumps back and forth in time, which sometimes take a line or two to notice) and in that simplicity, the book resonates. Originally published in 1947 in Germany, the English translation didn’t appear until 2010, and English readers missed out on a phenomenal addition to WWII literature in those sixty years. I’ve read my share of books about WWII and, while many of them have tried, none of them have achieved the complex emotional undercurrent of Comedy in a Minor Key. I picked this book up by accident after misreading the author’s name, and it just goes to show that sometimes mistakes are very good things. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go convince as many people as possible to read this book. Highly recommended.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the very first Holocaust-themed novels, published in 1947, it concerns a young, naive Dutch couple who agree to hide a Jewish man in their home during WWII. Then, he dies of pneumonia. What to do with a Jewish corpse under the Nazi occupation? Quietly powerful.

[Belinda Vlasbaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 sterren - Nederlandse paperback

Recensie volgt later.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somebody will just have to clue me in to why this book is so special!

You feel like you are reading the lines of a play rather than a novel. There are sentences such as - "on the table were three dirty cups and a newspaper" or "he carried the bag in his left hand". Phrases are repeated; we, the audience, are being told to pay attention....so that a message can be relayed. I found this annoying.


Time and time again I thought that doesn't make sense; one would not do that or think that. The story is not built upon plausible events. Vim and Marie are hiding a Jew in their house and he becomes sick and dies. They have to get rid of the body. Vim and a doctor drag the dead body out to a nearby park and place it under a bench. Is there no better place?! What do they worry about? That it is raining and cold; the body will get wet! This is all rather absurd. Anyhow Vim and Marie are forced into hiding, since they have not only left the dead body in Vim's pajamas, which have his insignia on them, but also carelessly left laundry tags attached. Now they are themselves forced into hiding, but they do go outside. At their new residence, others are told that Marie is pregnant. She is not pregnant and she is not informed that others have been told this! Generally all those involved in hiding people were unbelievably careless. Neither was the total lack of communication between Vim and Marie believable. If you are putting your life in danger by hiding someone, a little planning, and thus a little talking, is mandatory. Neither has Marie any understanding of why a Jew would not want to convert to another religion. Everyone is walking around in a fog! I could name many more unbelievable incidents.

Given that the events seem implausible, the whole story seems not as a real event but simply as a means for the author to make a statement. So what is the author trying to say? Maybe how hard it is to really imagine another's situation. Or, to fully understand another, you must be in their shoes, only then will you fully comprehend. Or does the author ask us how much danger are we willing to put ourselves in to help another? Maybe.....but nothing in this story is convincing!

I have nothing to remark about the audiobook narration by James Clamp.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordinary Goodness

Hans Keilson knew at first hand what he was writing about. Though trained as a pharmacologist in Berlin, his Jewish birth made it impossible for him to practice, and in 1936 he fled to Holland, going into hiding when the War broke out. This novella, published shortly after the War, tells of a young Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, who take in a Jewish man and hide him in an upstairs bedroom. They are good people, but also quite ordinary; that is their beauty. One gets the impression that there are a lot of similar couples in their small town, some taking one refugee, some taking more. It is dangerous—the interrogation rooms, cattle cars, and camps await—but these are everyday heroes. Neither Wim nor Marie hesitates for a moment when asked, and you know they are just two among thousands quietly following their consciences. Keilson's novella is essentially a thank-you letter to the Dutch people.

But it starts with a twist. Their lodger, whom they know as Nico, catches a fever and dies. The succeeding chapters alternate between the details of disposing of the body with their doctor's help, and flashbacks to various points in the year that Nico spent in their house. The word "comedy" in the title is well taken, not that any of this is funny, but that it is a series of everyday accidents, brief embarrassments, unexpected encounters, all fortunately having a good outcome. Even the clumsy business of dealing with the body, in a different context, could be the stuff of farce.

Only at the end do Wim and Marie, alone once more, really take stock of what they have done. It is a really striking passage, extraordinary in its honesty, and so far from the heroic myth:

And then there was also a little embarrassment, a little disappointment. Why did he of all people have to die? It was practically a trick he had played on them with this death, on the people who had kept him hidden for an entirely different purpose. He didn't need to go into hiding in order to die, he could have just simply…, like all the countless others….

It breaks off in strings of dots. For those are ellipses they cannot fill, outcomes they cannot allow. In the understatement of those unspoken thoughts lies the true power of this tribute to the bravery of ordinary people in a dangerous time.

[Tung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe in the cliché “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Too often over the years, a book has made me feel like the author was being paid by the word. I appreciate books whose author doesn’t waste words; Comedy in a Minor Key is a perfect example to me of how succinctness doesn’t have to compromise the story, and in fact, how succinctness can work in the favor of a story’s overall construct. The book tells the story of a Dutch couple (Wim and Marie) during WWII who are providing secret housing for a middle-aged Jewish man (Nico), but who then must find a way to dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia in their care. Even though the book was written in 1947, the book spends no unnecessary time explaining the context of their dilemma and assumes the reader knows what happened in the Netherlands during WWII, and what the inherent dangers of their predicament were. And despite the lack of drawn-out explanation of the novella’s context, reading this 60+ years later, I read this with the weight of history in my perspective and this book fits snugly into it. The book also leaves out all unnecessary backstory details and focuses squarely on Wim and Marie and Nico and their time together as hosts and guest – we don’t learn anything about their pasts: we don’t know what Wim and Marie were like growing up; we don’t know how they met; we don’t know how Nico escaped and went underground. And yet because the book chooses to focus squarely on their time together, once the body is eventually disposed of and the consequences of their decision played out, the story feels complete. There are many well-nuanced layers of thought running through this short book: the dynamic between hosts and guest, the prison-like existence lived by Nico and his emotional state in handling that, the younger Wim having to take charge of the much older Nico, the bonds built between people despite all these tensions, and so on. Just perfectly crafted. The translation I read suffered in a few sentences, but overall, the prose is tight and engaging. Highly recommended.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story of a young Dutch couple who hide a Jewish stranger for a year in their home is a gem. Wim and Marie are not committed to a cause or outraged by outside influences, but they are ordinary, decent people acting out of human kindness. The narrative is presented elliptically, probing the emotions of the couple and the man they know as Nico who dies of pnemonia before liberation, thus presenting a dilemma of how to dispose of the body. The comedy referred to in the title is more about the claustrophobic circumstances and pitfalls the arrangement provides. Although written in 1947, it is only now available in a new translation. It may be that the success of and interest in the books of Irene Nemirovsky and Hans Fallada are giving new life to this genre of "lost" masterpieces from mid-century Europe, and I hope that more of Keilson's books are made available.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, are hiding a Jew upstairs. And then he dies.

Hans Keilson just died this year at 101. His books, including this one written in 1947, have been newly and brilliantly translated and republished.

You can read this on a flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Pittsburgh.

Nico, the Jew upstairs, tells this wonderful couple, "It is not just the Jews." Maybe it will be Wim and Marie too. I'm no plot spoiler though.

A Comedy in a Minor Key is indeed told in the Dorian mode. A lovely sadness. And Hope amid the ruins.

In its minimalist beauty, I found this better than Moran's The Man in the Box. And I wonder if this is where Moran got the idea.

[John David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise is simple enough. A married couple, Wim and Marie, decide to take in a Jew named Nico during World War II. In hiding him, the comfortably middle-class Wim and Marie learn what it means to live the precarious life of a Jew in 1940s Holland, in what would have otherwise been a set of rather ordinary circumstances. Soon afterwards, Nico becomes ill and eventually dies in their house, leaving the couple in the unique position of needing to dispose of a body no one can know they had there in the first place. They eventually leave him wrapped in blankets in a nearby park, but soon discover that they might have left a clue to their identity behind. Therefore, in a wonderful turn of irony, Wim and Marie are themselves forced to instantly flee their house for fear of being discovered by the police.

The title is beautiful and wholly appropriate to the story. Juxtapositions are everywhere: there is the comic lightness of opera bouffe as Wim and Marie try to figure out how to get rid of Nico, but also the crushing dramatic realization of how this has all come about because of how some humans have chosen to treat others; the interplay of the quotidian as the couple go about their day-to-day existences in war-torn Holland with only the audience to find that this will one day be a place of grand historical importance.

Writer Francine Prose recently wrote in a piece in the New York Times that she has come to include Dutch writer Hans Keilson in her personal list of the world’s “very greatest writers.” On that alone, I took up Keilson’s “Death of the Adversary,” and was just as impressed. Despite Time magazine’s listing it as one of the ten best magazines of the year, aside Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” and Porter’s “Ship of Fools,” Keilson unfortunately fell into obscurity in the English-speaking world.

Translator Damion Searls’ revivification of his work is admirable and deserved, even while I found this “Comedy in a Minor Key” to be much less rewarding than “Death of the Adversary.” The former is a small, personal, intimate picture of human identity and frailty touchingly conceived, but it felt underdeveloped to me. Its size, at a mere 135 pages, gave me less time than I would have preferred to get to know Wim, Marie, and Nico. “Death of the Adversary,” however, deals with looming, world-historical forces that are at work in our lives, with bigger, abstracter ideas, and was probably for that reason more compelling for me. My rating of three stars here might be a little low. I didn’t know whether to go with three or four, but I can’t see myself rereading it any time soon, so I chose three. I would recommend to anyone interested in Keilson that they read “Death of the Adversary,” which I found to be truly spectacular.

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short novel about a young Dutch couple hiding a Jewish man in their home during the occupation of their country in World War Two. Things don't turn out for the best. It's a strange little book which doesn't give itself over to sentimentality and doesn't overdramatize. I'm tempted to say it's a book about the banality of goodness. It does leave you feeling stilettoed, because the credibility of the prose brings home the reality of the countless losses and lives unlived. There is a sort of parable included within the book in which the characters' places in life shift, bringing home the reality that we cannot truly know another's lived experience until we are placed in their situation. The book is ultimately a love letter to hope and kindness.

[Jim Ef · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.0/10
Η ιστορία του βιβλίου περιγράφει τη ζωή ενός ζεύγους και πως αυτή αλλάζει, όταν κατά την διάρκεια του Β παγκόσμιου πολέμου, δέχονται να κρύψουν από τους Ναζί, έναν Εβραίο.

Παρότι υπάρχουν στιγμές αγωνίας και κάποιας συγκίνησης, έχω την αίσθηση πως ο συγγραφέας, θέλει ο αναγνώστης να επικεντρωθεί στη ψυχολογία των χαρακτήρων και δεν τον νοιάζει να έρθεις κοντά μαζί τους. Νιώθεις σαν παρατηρητής και όχι ότι είσαι μέρος της ιστορίας. Το πετυχαίνει αυτό, περιγράφοντας την ιστορία όχι με συνεχόμενη ροή, αλλά με την εναλλαγή παρόντος και παρελθόντος. Πρώτα ξέρεις ότι κάποιος πέθανε και μετά μαθαίνεις για το ποιος ήτανε.

[Ana Lúcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

E quando um casal acolhe em casa um judeu em fuga e de repente tudo muda…
Durante a segunda guerra mundial, muitos judeus foram ajudados pelas populações, mantiveram-se escondidos, não sofreram os horrores dos campos de extermínio, mas passaram por um tipo de tormento mais lento e subtil. A espera, o medo e a culpa…
Um tema penoso, escrito com alguma, leveza, ironia e humor.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reviewer suggested, I did read some facts about Hans Keilson's life before reading this short novel, and the fact that he actually hid in someone's home to escape the holocaust maybe gave some added weight to it. But I think I would have enjoyed it anyway. It's weird to read about the trivial embarrassments and secretive uncertainties--much more than the serious dangers--involved in saving someone's life in this way and dealing with having them around all the time. And on the part of the hidden person, the understandable resentments about being saved by being imprisoned, as well as the self-lacerating guilt that accompanies feeling that resentment but also remembering the horrors that have happened to others. The book's an intriguing, unsettling mix of gently ironic and wrenchingly painful.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keilson's masterpiece is the only of its kind (that I've experienced) in Holocaust literature. Reading it, one feels as if a dimension as yet unimaginable has been added to the horrific story that we have now come to expect. There are no gas chambers in this one, no concentration camps either. Almost all the action takes place inside a comfortable house. The horror remains something that is only anticipated, and not necessarily imagined very well by the characters. The title fits beautifully.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those stories for which you need to account when it was written and what had been written about a period in history then. This must have been an eye opener when published about the perils of hiding someone, more specifically a Jew, during WWII and about how difficult it is to keep secrets. Sooner or later, secrets acquire a life of their own and are compelled to come out.

Based on the perspective, I give the book 4 stars. It is a short and compelling read. However, considering how much WWII lit has been published since, I don’t think this book brings much new.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmm. My "Hmmm" is because of my contemplation of this being called a black or dark comedy. Now, I did not read it because I expected a humorous look at Jews hiding from the Nazis, because I certainly can't imagine any humor coming from that situation (okay, maybe if Colonel Klink were involved). I came across the book when looking for books about Germans and in this case the Dutch living under the Nazis. This book is about a young Dutch couple hiding a Jew in their house. I read it straight and it brought to light very practical aspects of hiding someone on a day to day basis in a time when the milkman and the fishmonger come by the house. Also, I thought that the wife's reasons for helping someone were insightful. Don't we all want to be perceived as heroes? Isn't a lot of charity done to make the give feel good? Maybe the humor was in that everyone was doing it. In that case it made me feel good. When suddenly the tables are turned and the protector becomes the prey, I thought it was also telling as to how hard it is for any of us to put ourselves in another person's shoes, even though we think we have been doing it. Maybe I don't know what black comedy is, or maybe I don't have a sense of humor. Anyway, this book gave me more food for thought on a subject which has always been in the forefront of my mind -- what would I do to help a stranger in trouble?

[Caroline Mcphail-Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark comedy about how ordinary people cope during extraordinary circumstances in Holland during the Nazi occupation in WWII.

First published in 1947, and finally translated in 2010 to celebrate his 100th birthday Keilson explores a very different aspect of war, than the usual fare, of a young couple and their daily lives and how they resist the occupation, live and survive by just being themselves.

“He would never have to wait for anything again. He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within. It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge on stage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left. Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience. They feel that the play did turn out a bit sad after all, at the very end.” (106) so explains Keilson of the Jew the young couple harboured in their home as Keilson tries to, perhaps, understand, and explain the lives he witnessed during WWII.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at the library knowing nothing about the author, Dr. Keilson. I just finished the novella and read this NY Times article about him: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/boo...

I'm even more impressed. I enjoyed the novella because Keilson handles the omniscient third person with grace (no easy task, at least for me!), and he writes in the spare style that admire so much (James Salter's stories, for example). More importantly, though, I found this book riveting because of the author's understanding of human nature. He takes what must have been a tension-filled situation (a couple harboring a Jewish man during WWII), based in part on his own experiences, and shows the tenderness that the danger evokes in all of the involved parties. Like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, Keilson's Comedy in a Minor Key is powerful because of its urgency and immediacy. I highly recommend it!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written novella from 1947 about kindness and decency in a world that often has little use for either. A Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, agree to shelter a Jewish man they know as Nico during Nazi occupation in World War II. Unexpectedly, Nico develops an illness and dies and the couple face the difficulty of removing the body from their house without attracting the attention of the authorities as harborers of a Jew. The book moves back and forth in time and explores the thoughts of all of the characters as they face the unexpected consequences of their decisions. A superb book that I heartily recommend.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful Holocaust story (in less than 150 pages) to read while in isolation. People today can't abide by shelter-in-place. Nico in this story had his own room in a freestanding house with just a young couple sharing it with him. Other people hid in one room, with their entire families. I just read about a woman who hid in a well. There's always someone worse off than you think you are.

[Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has stayed with me. What was it like to hide a refuge - in this case a person of Jewish descent during the Holocaust? To take the risk to save a life? This book made it very real to me.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

gelesen für Sommerchallenge
Aufgabe 2. 50 - 100 Seiten

Wim und Marie haben sich im besetzten Holland den Widerstand gegen die Nazis angeschlossen und verstecken in ihrem Haus den Juden Nico. Trotz angespannter Situation gibt es Momente der Innigkeit und das Gefühl der Zusammengehörigkeit. Bis Nico sich eine dumme Erkältung zuzieht, stetig schwächer wird und schließlich stirbt. Wie wird man die Leiche eines rechtlosen Juden los, ohne sich selbst und den Widerstand zu gefährden?

Frage 1: Was hat dir besonders gut an dem Buch gefallen?
Ich fand es schön, eine Erzählung zu lesen, in der in Kriegszeiten das Gute im Menschen im Mittelpunkt steht.

Frage 2: Was hat dir weniger gut gefallen?
An manchen Stellen verlor der Autor sich in unrelevante Details.

Frage 3: Was war dein Lieblingscharakter?
Marie. Sie war realistisch, nicht hysterisch, konkret besorgt und sympathisch fehlerhaft.

Frage 4: Würdest du das Buch/eBook weiterempfehlen?
ja, vielleicht auch eine gute Schullektüre

[Roxy Elson · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
A meet in the middle read, I enjoyed the idea but found the text hard to read for too long, which isn't great for a pretty short book. I do feel that it may be influenced by my reading of some intensely wonderful characters in the weeks prior? But even so.
I don't think there was much of a comedy, and the melancholy of the minor key was much more present.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you read the history books it’s easy to forget that war is all about the most ordinary of people. There are far more foot soldiers than there are generals and there are far more civilians than there are soldiers. And there won’t be an ordinary person out there who’s been through a war who hasn’t got a tale to tell. Few of these will be tales of heroism but there will be tales of small moments of bravery, of doing the right thing. This is what we have here. Marie and Wim are just an ordinary Dutch couple whose consciences motivate them to do their “patriotic duty”. That’s the phrase that moves them. With others it’s the phrase “a purely humane act;” others respond to “Christian charity for the persecuted.” The end result is the same: families all over the country open their doors and take in strangers to keep them alive, Jews mostly of course but “not just Jews”. This detail is presented early on in the book, the day they first meet their ‘guest’ Nico but it wasn’t until later in the book its pointedness dawned on me.

People die in war—hundreds of thousands, millions—but just because there’s a war going on doesn’t mean that normal life and death doesn’t go on. Nico isn’t discovered and taken away. No. He catches a cold and dies. Which means the couple are faced with the task of disposing of the body and not getting seen doing so. And, of course, this is an ordinary couple who’ve probably never had to get rid of a dead cat let alone a dead human. Which is where the comedy comes in.

He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within. It was like a comedy where you expect the hero to emerge onstage, bringing resolution, from the right. And out he comes from the left. Later, though, the audience members go home surprised, delighted, and a little bit wiser for the experience.

Only I didn’t find it very funny. Or if it was funny it was funny-sad.

The disposing of corpses have been a source of humour for years. The last instance that jumps to mind was in Downton Abbey a couple of years back but there have been loads. It happened in Fawlty Towers. That there happens to be a war going on outside Maria and Wim’s front door is by the by. How do you get rid of a dead body and not draw undue attention to oneself whilst in the process of doing so?

This is where we enter the book but this is not what the book is solely about. As the night progresses we’re presented with the history of the three, how they met, how they coped and all the things that nearly went wrong during the months they were together. The fact is it’s more fluke than anything that Nico survived long enough to die in his own good time. They learn by their mistakes. We get to see how tiny things are blown out of proportion:

The little thorn that grows invisibly in anyone who lives on the help and pity of others grew to gigantic proportions, became a javelin lodged deep in his flesh and hurting terribly

It’s amazing that each of them—but especially Marie and Nico who are at home all day—manage to rein in their emotions. But they do. They establish rules and a routine and as long as each of them sticks to it things go smoothly. But you can’t always plan for the unexpected and that’s when things nearly go awry several times.

Where the book got interesting for me was after they get Nico out of the house. They don’t do it in a terrible rush—some thought goes into how exactly they’re going to go about it—but it’s only once the corpse is out the house that they start to tick the boxes and suddenly—it’s their daughter who raises the issue—they realise that they had not covered their tracks as well as they might and a way exists for the authorities to trace them. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

I’m a huge fan of the novella. And it’s amazing what you can pack into a small space when you have to:

Between the two rooms on the second floor ran the stairs to the first floor. If you took out the side wall of the built-in closet in Nico’s room, on the side where the stairs were, you found an empty space roomy enough to hide someone.

It’s simply a matter of being creative and Keilson certainly is. We get told what we need to know. He wrote this in 1947 and so little would’ve needed to be explained back then. Everyone would’ve been well away of what had gone on in Europe during the war. Nowadays not so much but the fact is it doesn’t matter which war is going on outside. What matters is the domestic drama. This isn’t a book about war; it’s a book about people. Three people forced together by circumstances. Sound like the setting to No Exit. Indeed when their daughter is talking about taking in ‘guests’ herself she says:

I’d take two or four! Just not three together, that’s bad in arguments and so on. It’s always two against one.

This is a fine little book. Had I been writing it I might’ve left the ending hanging rather than resolve it the way Keilson chooses to do. His is not a bad ending and I suppose you want a comedy, even a black comedy, to have something of an upbeat ending. I just don’t think this needed it.

[Nicole D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book might be short, but it is powerful. Perfect title. Didn't need more than this to create a sense of time, place, and emotion. Excellent.

Sometimes I have a hard time giving super short books 5-stars. 4.5 stars for sure.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its definitely a cool idea for a story

[Hans Luiten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prachtig boekje, sober en ingetogen schetst Hans Keilson in 120 pagina’s een menselijk drama

[Hermien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ik ben bij dat ik deze schrijver ontdekt heb. Mooi geschreven en boeiend verhaal waarin de auteur veel uit eigen ervaring geput heeft.