The Misfortunates

In this “semi-autobiographical” novel from Verhulst (Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill), the tattered family of narrator Dmitri, or “Dimmy,” lurches through life, frequently drunk and often disorderly. Dimmy, his uncles, and his father live in Arsendegem, Belgium, in a state of squalor about which nobody cares overmuch: “We were ashamed, but we didn’t do anything about it.... A miserable existence doesn’t have to be complicated.” The book itself is uncomplicated. Dimmy wryly relates stories, mostly from his youth, of his relatives’ alcoholic hijinks: getting a cousin drunk for the first time; “gambling to pay off gambling debts”; a drinking contest/bicycle race modeled, improbably, after the Tour de France, in which “vomiting wasn’t against the rules: the puked-up beer would not be deducted from the total.” Verhulst doesn’t shrink from portraying Dimmy in a bad light, as when he describes waiting for his child to be born: “There was still a very slim chance of the child being stillborn.... In that case I would find it difficult to conceal my delight.” This bitingly honest book tips toward the amusing as fiction and toward the dismaying as autobiography. (Oct.)