Ditch

by Hal Niedzviecki

Ditch is a subversive, compelling portrait of a young man's plunge into adulthood, set in Toronto, Buffalo and the suburbs of Maryland. Niedzviecki's prose quickly dumps you into the head of Ditch, awkward, aimless, endearing — still living with his mom, driving a delivery van to get by — and into the rather more complicated mind, diary, e-mail and website of a young runaway who moves into the upstairs apartment. Debs is beautiful, tortured and much projected upon, largely because of the kind of pictures of herself she puts up on her website. Both she and Ditch are searching for absent pasts and possible futures, and Debs is on the run from something particularly nasty.

Ditch is a sudden stumble into an instantly recognizable, constantly shifting, unforgettable world where everything happens through the filters of memory and modems.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Hal Niedzviecki is a writer, culture commentator and editor whose work challenges
preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. Hal works in both the fiction and nonfiction genres. He is the author
of books including, in fiction, the novel Ditch, and his latest novel The Program. In nonfiction, his most recent work is The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (www.peepdiaries.com). He is the
current fiction editor and the founder of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and
the independent arts ( www.brokenpencil.com). He edited the magazine from 1995 to
2002. Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across North
America including the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life,
Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. He was the recipient of the Alexander Ross Award for
Best New Magazine Writer at the 1999 National Magazine Awards and has presented his
work at events across North America including the International Festival of Authors in
Toronto. Once dubbed the “guru of independent/alternative action” by the Toronto Star,
Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction
and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities
at the heart of our fragmenting age. For excerpts, reviews, samples of past articles and
more, visit Hal’s website: www.smellit.ca

Reviews

[christopherdrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's safe to say that I like Niedzviecki's writing; I polished this off in three days, and that's only because I was interrupted by, y'know, daily life stuff. This is my first of his, so I'm definitely gonna seek out some more by him. The ending's a little...vague? I might just have to reread it again just to make sure I didn't miss anything. Wouldn't call this cyberpunk, as everyone else seems to be labeling it, but a great contemporary noir/romance nonetheless, with a compelling take on cycles of abuse and generational anxiety . 8/10 would eat here again.

[Erica Char · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wasn’t sure where the book was going to take me and I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick around to the end.

There were some word choices that didn’t feel right for the character to say. Following the chronological order was challenging. I still can’t really figure out what I just read or how I feel about it. Maybe it was me?

[Lana. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book from the interesting concepts to its setting in Toronto, and the themes of coming of age, searching for meaning, modern life "as filtered" through "memory and modems" - as described on the jacket. But generally, the barely lucid accounts of what was happening to our main characters Ditch (a young man disconnected and barely getting by) and Deb (troubled, seductive, young woman on the run) were confusing. Might have matched what was actually happening in their compromised brains, but difficult to enjoy. Style over function.

[Evan Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of strange! ;p but i liked it!

[B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

What dreck.... I rarely give bad reviews, but am forced to make an exception to a writer who has no mastery of sentence, paragraph, anecdote, vignette or narrative.

[Peace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my style of book. I kept having to reread half the pages to figure out what was going on. I don't know why I finished, because by the end I was completely lost.