An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans Review

1944, and, somewhere on the Eastern front, an unnamed man sorta fighting for the Red Army oddly finds himself alone in a luxuriously large empty house. Quickly shedding his uniform for civvies, he decides to pass himself off as the owner. But as the battle lines shift, the Germans move back into the area – as well as the real owner of the house. What will our man do???

The intriguing premise hooked me into trying out Dutch novelist Willem Frederik Hermans’ 1951 novella An Untouched House but unfortunately Hermans didn’t do anything special with it. 

You’re not told where this is taking place or the protagonist’s name, and a lot of what happens feels contrived – finding the house, being left alone without consequence from the army, even his awful actions towards the end feel strangely dream-like - so I never felt like I had a firm handle on the story. And while I understand why Hermans opted for a vague storytelling style – to highlight the chaotic and uncertain nature of the war experience, which I did think was clever - it still left me unengaged and therefore not invested in what was happening. 

It’s not helped by the roughly sketched characters I couldn’t remotely connect with or the rather banal message Hermans appears to arrive at by the end: war is hell/what is it good for (absolutely nuthin)! I suppose the brutal and nihilistic ending is realistic of the war but I still found it unimpressive, unimaginative and trying a bit too hard to shock. Certain aspects of the story left me plain baffled: the locked room and its inhabitant – what the whaaat was going on there?? 

Hermans’ prose is capable, even artful at times, and you get a strong sense of doom pervading the atmosphere of the time. Some of the imagery is striking – the first time the man takes a bath in he doesn’t know how long, and then the extremely bloody finale. On the whole though I found An Untouched House to be underwhelming given the dramatic subject matter, indistinct and unmemorable – I’m not surprised Hermans is largely unknown outside his native Holland.