Dimitri Verhulst
Mrs Verona Comes Down from the Hill (Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af)
Journey’s end
With Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af, a subdued, sensitive novella, Dimitri Verhulst adds a new dimension to his work.
Years ago, Mrs Verona and her husband, both of them musicians, moved to a hill outside the village of Oucwègne. Then Mr Verona took ill, built up a vast woodpile for his wife, and hung himself from a tree.
The widow decides to have a cello made from wood from the pile, but because it needs to dry out extremely slowly, the instrument will take twenty years to make. In the meantime, her dogs keep her company.
The village slowly falls into decline, and the forty remaining residents get by on what little that they have. The local female vet also acts as doctor. The young men start up a table football competition in a shabby canteen. The manageress of the village shop sells goods that have long passed their expiry date, but she also gives generous credit.
After the death of her husband, the bachelors in the village hope to catch Mrs Verona’s eye. Before they pluck up the courage to make a move, they wait patiently for a signal that the widow is ready to begin a new life. It never comes. On a cold February day, when Mrs Verona has placed her last log in the stove, she descends the path to the village with her faithful dog, in the knowledge that she will never have the energy to climb the hill again.
Dimitri Verhulst brings the rundown village to life with exceptional simplicity and authenticity. The extraordinary care he devotes to his written style allows the leisurely narrative pace to harmonize with the development of the story, and creates the scope for an appealing geniality and intimisme. Mild irony lurks beneath the salient formulation, lodging the evoked emotions in an attractive field of tension. Mrs Verona Comes Down from the Hill is a modest but discerning literary masterwork.
Publisher
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Publishing details
Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af (2006, 110 pp)
Biography
Dimitri Verhulst (b. 1972) comes from a broken home and spent his childhood in foster homes and institutes. He made his debut with a collection of stories, De kamer hiernaast (The Room Next Door), published in 1999, about his unsettled youth. The novels Niets, niemand en redelijk stil (Nothing, Nobody, and Reasonably Quiet, 2000) and De verveling van de keeper (The Boredom of the Goalkeeper, 2002) also cover this ground. Problemski Hotel (2003), the funny but poignant novel about the former residents of an asylum-seekers’ centre in the north of Belgium, was his breakthrough to the general public. In 2006 he published the novel De helaasheid der dingen (The Misfortunates), which has been compared to the work of Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, and the novella Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af (Mrs Verona Comes Down from the Hill). Verhulst also has a collection of poetry to his name: Liefde, tenzij anders vermeld (Love, Unless Otherwise Stated, 2001). For his novel Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol (2008) he was awarded the Libris Literature Prize 2009.
Quotes
The language in which this story is written steams and stamps, and then is suddenly blank and bare. Verhulst sees the reality behind the façade, and, with this small-scale narrative recounts the story of love, without it ever becoming sweet or sticky.
De Groene Amsterdammer
Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af is a slow, constant, melancholic book. Brilliant.
Leeuwarder Courant
You taste the God-given writing talent in almost every sentence.
Elsevier
Translations
- Madame Verona steigt den Hügel hinab. München: Luchterhand, 2008
- Gospođa Verona silazi s brežuljka. Zagreb: Andrijići, 2009
- Madame Verona comes down the hill. London: Portobello Books, 2009
- Continued...