Thank you to Quercus Books and Netgelley for an advance copy of this work.

In Rotterdam it is Emma Verweij's last day. She is 96 years old and finally ready to die, but not before she thinks back over the loves and losses of her long life. Her fragmented reminiscences tell of her flight from Nazi Germany in the wake of the failed Von Stauffenberg assassination attempt, hiding in an isolated Black Forest village and her attempts to build a life in Holland.

For years she has tried to bury her memories of the war but now they are hard to ignore. Her story weaves between several different periods of her life so that her story only emerges only slowly and we learn about her family: her parents failed marriage, her husband's role in the war and the family she has managed to build in Rotterdam.

In a circuitous, unhurried narrative that effectively expresses both the disjointed state of Emma's failing thoughts and the way that our memories can creep up on us, thoughts of one event, one person sparking memories of another, years later. Emma approaches parts of her life indirectly, circling the more painful parts and offering small details until she is ready to face them more clearly.

It's a story infused with sadness and secrets and regret and the tone is a little distant but in a way that feels entirely appropriate for the end of a long life when one might finally be able to look back with some detachment. It's an abstracted, ephemeral piece of writing that feels deeply personal and addresses guilt, love and shells that we build to protect ourselves. To me this is the kind of story that the Gustav Sonata, which I read a few days earlier, aspired to be. ( )

Emma looks back over her life as she waits for her son and the euthanasia team (this is modern Rotterdam, and she is in her 90s).

"She did notice, though, that her memory was becoming overloaded. Emma wandered through her recollections along a complex network of corridors, the crumpled map of her life. She was ninety-six years old, she had witnessed a century, and understood nothing at all."

She remembers her first husband's involvement in the plot against Hitler, her escape from Germany and a long life lived in peace. There are still secrets and family conflicts, and the tone is bleak and littered with poetry and philosophy quotes. To me it is like a different world, and I liked visiting it.

"Vagueness piled on top of rumour and speculation , on dreams and suspicions: family history is a constant stream of knowing almost nothing , a scrap of insight here and there, an unintentional discovery. Those who find out and understand something do so by accident. The past is black, her parents’, and her own as well."

Completists please note: ťhis connects characters from three other books, so you might want to read those first. ( )

Op het eind van het leven zal Emma zal worden geregeerd door haar herinneringen. In de laatste nacht zal haar leven worden samengebracht in een meanderende stroom van beelden uit haar bestaan. Alles wat zij min of meer heeft verdrongen wordt uiteindelijk toch in scènes afgespeeld..
Dat in al die herinneringen ook verwijzingen naar zijn eerder verschenen boeken staan, maakte dit boek voor mij tot een onverwachte thuiskomst. Met name het verhaal uit zijn vorige boek “Bericht uit Berlijn” speelt een sleutelrol in deze roman. Zijn overige boeken komen min of meer samen in “De langste nacht” waarmee voorlopig een denkbeeldige cirkel wordt gesloten. (?)

De Kat heeft wederom een prachtig boek geschreven; indrukwekkende zinnen op ieder bladzijde en een perfect gecomponeerd verhaal.
Klasse ! ( )