'I Refuse' by Per Petterson (Review)

While I do my best to cover the wide world of fiction in translation, there's still much out there untried, with many writers I want to check out.  One, in particular, that I've been meaning to get to for some time is Per Petterson, author of several books including Out Stealing Horses, a work which won both the IMPAC Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  With a copy of his most recent book dropping through my letter box recently, now seemed like a good opportunity to see him in action - and on the strength of this one, he's definitely a writer I want to try more of in the future :)

*****
I Refuse (translated by Don Bartlett, review copy courtesy of Random House UK) begins in 2006 on a bridge near Oslo.  Jim, an unemployed middle-aged man, is off fishing early in the morning, when a car stops and a window goes down, through which a greeting is proffered.  The man in the car is Tommy, Jim's closest childhood friend, one he hasn't seen for over thirty years.  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they go their separate ways, but both feel that they have unfinished business which needs to be resolved.

Then it's back to the early sixties, where we encounter two boys about to enter their teens, a couple of friends in the middle of small-town blues and family crises.  Through the ups and downs, and flashes both forward and back, we see what was and what has developed, witnessing decisions which turned out to be life changing.  We are also present when offers are refused and backs are turned - little things which set the course for the boys' future...

I'm definitely very happy I picked this book up.  Though I Refuse is a book which is easy to read, it's most certainly not simplistic.  Petterson's novel is a well-worked, absorbing story of two friends and the choices they make, and it also paints a picture of small-town Norway in the sixties and seventies while touching on more serious contemporary issues.

The main focus is on the two boys/men, mismatched friends who turn out quite differently.  Jim is a quiet boy, intelligent and brought up strictly by his Christian mother, so when we see how he's ended up (unemployed, sleeping around, with undiagnosed mental issues), it's a bit of a surprise.  Slowly, we learn more about his struggles, his loneliness and the panic attacks:

"And then all of a sudden I couldn't breathe and tumbled against the wall and the coats hanging there from their pegs and pulled at least two of them down with me and crashed against the shoe rack, and there was a big plastic shoehorn stuck in behind the rack, and it hit me in the ribs like a spear, and it hurt so much I was about to start howling, which was something I often did in those days, when I was alone, pretty often in fact, it's true, and it had been like that for quite a while, and I didn't know why, but this time not a sound came out."
pp.86/7 (Harvill Secker, 2014)

During his school days, Jim always had Tommy to turn to in his darkest hours; however, as an adult, Jim is very alone with a problem he struggles to handle.

While Tommy's life has turned out a little differently, he has (and has had) problems of his own.  The teenage Tommy is an angry young man with every right to his rage.  His mother has run away (leaving Tommy to care for the family) mainly through fear of her husband - and Tommy's father is a very scary man indeed:

"Gently, almost, he held my arm and led me into the living room.  Then he closed the door carefully behind us, turned and suddenly he started to shove me around the room among the little furniture we had, and each time I was sent flying, he came after me and punched me hard in the shoulder and the throat and hurled me against the wall, where my head smacked against the panel, and it was shocking that he didn't use his boots." (p.28)

Tommy, as he will in the future, refuses to accept the status quo and decides to stand up for himself.  However, when we make a decision, we can never be completely sure of the consequences, and his stand shapes the lives of more people than he could have expected.

The novel initially appears to be focused purely on the two friends, but as it progresses, we begin to hear different voices.  The main one is Siri, Tommy's sister, the only person with strong links to both of the boys, and her perspective allows us to see Jim and Tommy through different eyes, a more objective viewpoint.  Towards the end of the novel, we also hear from Tommy's mother and Jonsen, the man who takes Tommy in.  The more we hear from these people, the more of the story we get to know about, allowing us to piece together puzzles which had previously remained a mystery.

I Refuse is an excellent story of growing up in small-town Norway, with the writer showing us how strong friendships develop, and how they can gradually unravel.  At times, it can be a little bleak, but there are many nice touches, one of which is a fairly casual 'interrogation' at the local police station.  In a small town, where secrets are a scarce commodity, everyone knows who's guilty, but there's no need to try too hard to get a conviction...

For those who have been following Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series, there are plenty of similarities to be found here, with echoes of both Boyhood Island (kids on bikes riding to the local petrol station, bus rides to school) and A Death in the Family - especially when Tommy visits his father's house:

"And everywhere there was rubbish in plastic bags which had never got across the doorstep nor down to the road, and most wasn't even in the bag but was tossed around, so the floor was covered with litter, and an evil smell drifted in through the open doors of two other rooms, from the bathroom and what must have been the room where he slept with the windows closed, and it was disgusting to think that he could sleep in that room, and the worst was the foul, numbing, ominous stench wafting in from the kitchen, where my father stood by the door..." (pp.216/7)

No, it's not a book which completely echoes Knausi's work, but with Karl Ove receiving such attention in English, comparisons with his fellow Norwegian writer are, frankly speaking, inevitable.

That's especially so as the excellent translation was created by Don Bartlett, a man who also provides the English voice of a certain other Norwegian writer...  While it's another great job by Bartlett, it's a very different style.  The writing is simple and elegant, flowing sentences with multiple simple clauses sweeping the reader along.  A childish enthusiasm turns descriptive prose into a kind of confession, taking the reader into the characters' confidence.  At times, it seems almost as if we have their ear...

The story is also wonderfully constructed, and secrets are gradually unveiled in a calm, matter-of-fact way until the big picture becomes clear.  The reader is given parts of the puzzle, but is forced to wait to see how they come together.  However, the same is true for the two main characters, as they spend the contemporary part of the book crossing paths unaware.  Theirs are two very different lives in terms of success and wealth - despite this, they are both broken and unhappy.

I Refuse is an enjoyable work, one I'd definitely recommend, and it's a book which will certainly be under discussion come IFFP time next year.  Luckily for me, having only just started with Petterson's work, there are plenty more of his books out there - another six of his novels have been translated into English (and many of them are available at my local library).  Now, of course, there's only one thing stopping me trying another one - I just need to find the time to read it ;)

'Boyhood Island' by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Review)

After a month of female writers, it was inevitable that I'd be getting through a few more testosterone-filled books in September, and who better for that than the king of confessional male writing?  Time for another slice of the life of a certain Mr. Karl Ove Knausgaard - and this one takes us right back to the start of it all...

*****
Boyhood Island (translated by Don Bartlett) is the third in the series of Knausgaard's six My Struggle tomes, the latest to make it into English so far.  The book starts off with his parents' move to the small island of Tromøy, with little baby Karl Ove in tow.  What follows in the next 490 pages is the story of a boy growing up, with the book ending (for now) with his departure from the island at the age of twelve.

Much of the story follows young Knausi as he roams free through the landscape of both Tromøy and his youth.  He runs wild, spending sunny days in the fields and at sea, enjoying a free-range, sepia-tinted childhood, with football, sweets, music and girls as his main distractions.  It's a wonderful life, but there is one, inescapable, shadow hanging over his otherwise perfect days - his father....

I'd heard some less flattering things about Volume Three of the series, and many reviews and comments felt it was weak compared to the first two books in the series.  According to Wikipedia, Volumes Three to Five were written during the initial My Struggle uproar in Norway, and the writing of these parts was supposedly a little rushed.  Initially, I agreed with that view.  The book was great to read, and I zipped through the whole thing in no time, but the first half, in particular, felt at times a bit like Topsy and Tim go to Norway...

There's a lot more to Boyhood Island than that, though.  The simple tone is deliberate, with Knausgaard's style mirroring the simplicity of the child's thoughts, the adult writer keeping out of the child's head as much as possible.  In fact, as the story progresses, and Karl Ove grows up, the style does gradually become a little more complex, and it's a wonderful description of a boy emerging from childhood.

Knausgaard is only five years or so older than me, and there's a lot here that reminds me of my own childhood.  Quite apart from the physical escapades, his weaknesses bring back painful childhood memories.  He has irrational fears, terrified by the sounds the pipes make in his house; he's unable to swim a few yards over the deep water, even though his father is right there; he's deeply affected by childish teasing (there are lots of tears...).  And, of course, then there's the complexity of relations with the opposite sex...

As he grows up, Karl Ove becomes more self aware, getting over many of his earlier behaviours.  He also gradually realises his flaws, or at least the character traits which are seen as such by his classmates at school.  To an outsider, he's a geeky, bookish, slightly effeminate cry-baby.  Still, it takes him a while to realise why he's not really as popular as he'd thought (and hoped).

This was, of course, a very different time, and the young Knausi was able to roam free, pretty much at will.  He disappears for hours at a time, only coming back for food, a young boy enjoying climbing, skiing, swimming, boating:

"That was everything.  That was the world.
 But what a world!"
p.15 (Harvill Secker, 2014)

One of the biggest realisations I had while reading Boyhood Island is how different Karl Ove's childhood (which, as noted, was fairly similar to mine) is from that of the current generation who, for many reasons, are not given half as much freedom to explore the outside world.  My daughter is seven and I'm not sure if she's ever actually left the house alone...

What makes the book, though, is not the portrayal of an idyllic outdoor lifestyle, but the portrait of Knausgaard's father.  Calling him the shadow over Karl Ove's childhood is a fair understatement:

"The sole really unpredictable factor in this life, from autumn to winter, spring to summer, from one school year to the next, was dad.  I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to re-create the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close." (p.287)

The father is an irrational power which Karl Ove can do nothing about - as a young boy, he is absolutely powerless and at the mercy of his father's moods and whims.  And if those moods are usually bad ones...

Unfortunately for Karl Ove, the father is a tyrant who cannot be gainsaid.  He's a school-teacher of the old-school variety, a strict task-master who brooks no opposition, handing out unfair punishments, devoid of any sympathy.  The poor son is frequently punished for events beyond his control:

"What are you doing?" dad said.  "Are you completely stupid?  You don't stack wood like that!"
 He bent down and scattered the logs with his big hands.  I watched him with tears in my eyes.
 "You lay them lengthwise!" he said.  "Have you never seen a woodpile before?"
 He looked at me.
"Don't stand there weeping like a girl, Karl Ove.  Can't you do anything right?" (p.145)

It's an amazing, sobering picture of the helplessness of a child in the face of adult antagonism, one for all parents to think very closely about.  While it may seem like a harmless release of frustration, it's actually a highly damaging attack on a fragile soul.

The scary part of Boyhood Island is, as I keep saying, how similar it is to my own childhood.  Like Karl Ove, I spent a lot of my time running free, playing football and setting fires (I've matured - a bit- since then), and I, too, was an indiscriminate and voracious reader, a boy without many friends.  A Man in Love having also struck a chord, in these books Knausgaard seems to be showing me my past and present - and as he's five years older than me, I have a nasty feeling that I've also seen some of my future...

It might not be quite as good as the first two in the series, but Boyhood Island is a book that definitely grew on me.  While initially fun, but a little plain, the dark side of the story involving Karl Ove's father saves it from being a dull read.  Again, though, as was the case with A Man in Love, I'd have to wonder whether it's a boy thing: will women connect with his childhood as much?  Part of the beauty of the series so far is how much the books speak to me, but do they speak to everyone?  Will Karl Ove's clumsy, distant views of girls ring as true with female readers as they do with men?

Do let me know if you have any answers to these questions;)

'The Blue Room' by Hanne Ørstavik (Review)

When considering books from publishers for Women In Translation Month, one small press definitely stood out.  In addition to releasing sets of three related novellas each year, Peirene Press have also kept the gender balance fairly even, with their first fourteen books equally split between male and female writers.  With that in mind, and having not read the latest Peirene offering, opting for today's book was an easy decision to make.  If only all life's decisions were as simple...

*****
Hanne Ørstavik's The Blue Room (translated by Deborah Dawkin, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a psychological novel set in two different places.  The first is the blue room of the title, the bedroom of Norwegian student Johanne, where the unfortunate young woman wakes one morning only to find that she can't open the door - because it's been locked from the outside.

Naked, confused and distressed about being unable to get to the airport (she was about to embark on a trip overseas), she is forced to spend the day thinking about why she's being kept in her room.  The second setting for the story, then, is Johanne's mind, and we're immediately taken back a couple of weeks to her first meeting with the handsome Ivar, the catalyst for all that has followed.  However, wherever and whenever Johanne's memories take us, one thing is certain; there's a shadowy figure in her subconscious, and it's someone very close to home...

The Blue Room is an excellent book, and after one reading it's up there with my favourite Peirene books (probably my favourite of the ones I've read in English).  A fascinating read, it's also frustrating at times, as the writer takes us on a trip through the psyche of a damaged, submissive young woman.  In following Johanne's thoughts of the past two weeks, we are given a look at the problem of family relationships and the dangers arising when family members become that little bit too close.

Johanne is an intriguing creation.  While she's an intelligent, popular and presumably attractive young woman, she's also wracked with doubts, convinced she's not up to the challenging life path she's drawn up for herself.  She's a psychology student who's keen to jump to conclusions, swinging from happiness to self-loathing in seconds, and the minutely-detailed plans she has are shattered by the appearance of the charming Ivar.  Of all eventualities, it appears that love is the one she's least well-equipped to deal with...

Which is not to say that she doesn't want to be loved; in fact, she's desperate for affection.  However, Johanne is actually looking for a lot more:

"Why can't somebody take care of me?"
p.146 (Peirene Press, 2014)

This simple plea is key to her personality, revealing a longing to be dominated, a wholly submissive nature which is in danger of taking over her life.  The relationship with Ivar, which, for most people, would be a joyous time, is overshadowed at times by her depressing thoughts.  Her mind is full of disturbing images, her fantasies, nightmares, of what might happen if she allows herself to get swept away.

If you're wondering where this all comes from, you don't have to look very far.  A recent Twitter meme was asking for examples of bad parents in literature, and Johanne's Mum would be right up there.  As well as showing us a fragile young woman, Ørstavik also creates a portrait of the mother as a highly damaging influence, a controlling, manipulative shadow hanging over poor Johanne's life.  This is a mother-daughter relationship which goes a little too far (as shown by some quite disturbing scenes on the toilet..).

Of course, she is the one who has locked Johanne in her room, leaving her daughter to have a good think about her actions.  The mother herself, though, is not without her own issues, as we learn through the rare glimpses of the past which slip through Johanne's subconscious.  The daughter's fear of men stems from the mother's own experiences:

"Men are so simple.  Controlled by sex and power.  Like robots", she said. (pp.51/2)

With Johanne reliant on her mother for accommodation and living expenses if she's ever going to achieve her plan of  building up a psychology practice (an idea which someone else planted in her mind...), she feels as if she's using her mother, a feeling which leads to guilt.  In truth, though, it's most definitely the mother who is abusing her position.

Ørstavik's novel is a wonderful piece of writing, with an excellent translation, a book which skilfully inserts occasional, shocking images amongst the stream of mundane thoughts running through Johanne's mind.  For the most part, the book is written in short sentences, but the sentences become longer, and more emotion laden, when Johanne gets excited, the plain descriptive prose being overrun by frantic, violent thoughts.  In addition to the themes covered above, there are several other areas which could be explored at length, such as the importance of Johanne's faith in both helping and suppressing her and the symbolism of her back pain, a feature which comes up again and again in the story.  Someone else will have to follow those themes up, though ;)

As with most Peirene books, intertextual reading is also tempting.  Meike picks her books very carefully, and while the three works released each year form a whole, there are always nods back to previous offerings.  In terms of an unreliable narrator who offers the reader incomplete information, Next World Novella springs to mind, while the focus on a mother smothering her child will inevitably lead to thoughts of Beside the Sea.  Perhaps the guiding ethos of the Peirene empire is that mother does *not* always know best...

However, with its central theme of parental domination, perhaps it's The Mussel Feast which best complements The Blue Room.  Without giving too much away, the book is really all about Johanne's day in her room and what will happen to the mother-daughter bond when she gets out.  While the reader will be hoping Johanne manages to break free, it's difficult to see someone so guilt laden being able to stand up to her oppressor when she appears so trapped, both mentally and physically:

"But what do we do with the guilt?  Being ignorant of the moment things began, we can repeatedly deny guilt, pointing ever further back to a previous event as the starting point - it wasn't me.  I prefer to think the opposite.  To think of myself as guilty of everything, thus giving me a responsibility and a duty to change." (p.15)

It's all very well for Virginia Woolf to ask for a room of one's own - it's of no use unless you're able to go in and out without needing to ask for permission...

IFFP Guest Post by Jacqui Patience - 'A Man in Love' by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Of the Shadow Panelists for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, only Jacqui (@Jacquiwine) does not have her own blog, so when she asked if she could post the odd thought or two here at my place, I was happy to oblige.  Here, then, is her take on one of the favourites for this year's prize - a big book from an old friend...

*****

A Man in Love (translated by Don Bartlett) begins by pitching us straight into the action, into a bit of a ‘domestic’ in fact, as we join Karl Ove Knausgaard in the middle of a summer holiday in Tjorn, near Gothenburg. The time is July 2008, and these opening scenes paint a candid picture of the reality of Karl Ove’s family life with Linda, his second wife, and their three children (Vanya, Heidi and John). All the tensions of trying to occupy and manage the needs of their three young children are centre stage:

…so twenty minutes later we found ourselves on a high, narrow and very busy bridge, grappling with two buggies, hungry, and with only an industrial area in sight. Linda was furious, her eyes were black, we were always getting into situations like this, she hissed, no one else did, we were useless, now we should be eating, the whole family, we could have been really enjoying ourselves, instead we were out here in a gale-force wind with cars whizzing by, suffocating from exhaust fumes on this bloody bridge. Had I ever seen any other families with three children outside in situations like this?

p.5 (Harvill Secker, 2013)

It’s a compelling opening, and one that immediately captured my interest.  The book starts at this point and returns to these scenes towards the end. In between these bookends, a number of other strands run through the narrative, all of which come together to form the crux of Karl Ove’s story.

In one sense – perhaps unsurprisingly given the book’s title – this is a story of how Karl Ove falls in love with Linda. At this point the timeline flips back to the early 2000s. Having suddenly upped and left Tonje, his wife and partner of eight years, Karl Ove moves from Norway to Stockholm and reconnects with Linda, a writer he first encountered at the Biskops-Arno writers’ workshop. They meet several times for coffee, the occasional drink in a bar, and while it’s clear they are attracted to one another, they seem unable to express their real feelings in order to move beyond mere small talk. Unable to deal with this paralysis any longer, Karl Ove decides to pour out his heart in a letter to Linda:

I wrote down what she meant to me. I wrote what she had been for me when I saw her for the first time and what she was now. I wrote about her lips sliding over her teeth when she got excited. I wrote about her eyes, when they sparkled and when they opened their darkness and seemed to absorb light. I wrote about the way she walked, the little, almost mannequin-like, waggle of her backside. I wrote about her tiny Japanese features. I wrote about her laughter, which could sometimes wash over everything, how I loved her then. I wrote about the words she used most often, how I loved the way she said ‘stars’ and the way she flung around the word ‘fantastic’. I wrote that all this was what I had seen, and that I didn’t know her at all, had no idea what ran through her mind and very little about how she saw the world and the people in it, but that what I could see was enough. I knew I loved her and always would. (p.194)

I won’t reveal exactly how the couple get together, but clearly they do. Here’s Karl Ove in the glow-zone of the first flushes of love:

For the first time in my life I was completely happy. For the first time there was nothing in my life that could overshadow the happiness I felt. We were together constantly, suddenly reaching for each other at traffic lights, across a restaurant table, on buses, in parks, there were no demands or desires except for each other. I felt utterly free, but only with her, the moment we were apart I began to have yearnings. (p 201)

As time passes, however, the heightened intensity of the first flushes of love fades away. Children arrive and A Man in Love taps into Karl Ove’s search for meaning in his everyday existence:

Everyday life, with its duties and routines, was something I endured, not a thing I enjoyed, not something that was meaningful or made me happy. This had nothing to do with a lack of desire to wash floors or change nappies but rather with something more fundamental: the life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it, and always had done. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts. (p. 59-60)

In some sense, I think part of what Knausgaard is trying to do here is to find a way of navigating normality, those flat periods between the peaks of intensity that life throws his (and our) way. We experience periods of extreme emotional sharpness in our lives. Our teenage years where everything is hyper-intense, falling in love, the birth of a child, the adrenaline rush from moments of success, a death in the family. But it’s trying to find meaning and fulfilment in the everyday that presents a challenge for Karl Ove, despite the fact he clearly loves and feels great tenderness towards his family:

At the traffic lights across from us a car was revving, and when I turned my head I saw the sound was coming from one of those enormous jeep-like vehicles that had begun to fill our streets in recent years. The tenderness I felt for Vanja was so great it was almost tearing me to pieces. To counteract it, I broke into a jog. (p. 54)

For Knausgaard, perhaps the key to all this is being able to free up sufficient space and time for his work as a writer… and this topic forms another strand within the narrative. Here, an interview with a journalist causes him to reflect on his frustrations as a writer, and difficulties in being able to devote sufficient time to his calling:

I had one opportunity. I had to cut all my ties with the flattering, thoroughly corrupt world of culture in which everyone, every single little upstart, was for sale, cut all my ties with the vacuous TV and newspaper world, sit down in a room and read in earnest, not contemporary literature but literature of the highest quality, and then write as if my life depended on it. For twenty years if need be. (p. 459)

And yet the minutiae and demands of his family life are stopping him, and he lays bare his feelings for the reader to see:

But I couldn’t grasp the opportunity. I had a family and I owed it to them to be there. I had friends. And I had a weakness in my character which meant that I would say yes, yes, when I wanted to say no. no, which was so afraid of hurting others, which was so afraid of conflict and which was so afraid of not being liked that it could forgo all principles, all dreams, all opportunities, everything that smacked of truth, to prevent this happening. (p. 459-460)

This is my first experience of Knausgaard and I found it utterly compelling and addictive. I’m reading this year’s IFFP longlist (along with Stu, Tony, Bellezza, Tony and David) and as I didn’t have time to start with A Death in the Family – My Struggle: Book 1, I pitched straight in with A Man in Love.

I’m finding it a little hard to pinpoint exactly why I found this book so gripping, but I think a large part of it has to do with the sense that these are real people Knausgaard is showing us here. Real people with real names and real lives, that’s how it appears to me. And he’s laying himself and his emotions bare with extreme candour. Nothing is held back, flaws and all. Even though he internalises many of his own emotions and avoids conflict in social situations, we, the readers, gain access to his innermost thoughts right down to their essence.

Maybe there’s also an element of my recognising many of the demands and challenges he describes in raising three small children all very close to one another in age. I’ve seen the exhaustion and mix of emotions this can trigger in friends and family in similar situations and can empathise.

Part of the appeal (for me) also stems from the way in which the narrative unfolds. It doesn’t follow a conventional narrative arc and as a reader there’s the allure of not knowing quite where Karl Ove is going to take us next. Alongside the story of Karl Ove and Linda’s family life, children’s parties and wandering around Stockholm with a buggy, he spins off into topics including existential discussions on the meaning of Hölderlin’s poems, the value in innocence and purity, cultural differences between Sweden and Norway and many more. We meet various friends and family members, all vividly painted in such a way that conveys their distinct personalities and demeanours.  There are flashes of painful humour, too; the acute embarrassment and humiliation Karl Ove feels when dancing with Vanya at baby Rhythm Time class, his irritation at Swedish middle-class parents for plying children with wholesome vegetable crudités at a toddler’s party and his encounters with the neighbour from hell. It’s all here.

This is my fifth book from the IFFP longlist and while I’ve yet to read the other ten I’d be surprised if A Man in Love doesn’t make the shortlist.  Once I’ve worked through the remaining books on the longlist I’m sure I’ll read A Death in Family along with forthcoming instalments as they appear… I suspect I’m in for the long haul now.

'A Man in Love' by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Review)

Back in March, during my IFFP reading for this year, I tried the first part of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series, A Death in the Family, a book which looked at parts of the writer's life in minute, painstaking detail.  Today, we're back for part two - it's a touch lighter than the first instalment, but still very, very personal...

*****
A Man in Love (translated by Don Bartlett) starts with our friend on a summer trip with Linda, his second wife, and his three kids.  Knausgaard playing happy families?  Not exactly...

"The situation infuriated Linda, sitting at the other end of the table - I could see it in her eyes - but she bit her tongue, made no comment, waited until we were outside and on our own, then she said we should go home.  Now.  Accustomed to her moods, I said she should keep her mouth shut and refrain from making decisions like that when she was in such a foul temper.  That riled her even more of course, and that was how things stayed until we got into the car next morning to leave."
p.5 (Harvill Secker, 2013)

Three pages in, and he's at it already.  Knausi (as I like to call him) paints a detailed picture of a man who loathes family life...

Then we go back in time, witnessing the writer's arrival in Sweden, overweight and depressed.  Despite his literary success, he's not a happy man:

"All the music around me, all the literature around me, all the art around me, it should have made me happy, happy, happy.  All the beauty in the world, which should have been unbearable to behold, left me cold.  That was how it was, and that was how it had been for so long that I could no longer stand it and had decided to do something about it.  I wanted to be happy again.  It sounded stupid.  I couldn't say it to anyone, but that was how it was." (p.136)

Having walked out on his first wife, Tonje, he's decided that what he needs to kickstart his life, and his writing, is a new start in a new country.

Having escaped from his past, the world is now his oyster.  He sets himself up in an apartment in Stockholm and decides to spend his time focusing on writing and unwinding.  That is, until he catches up with Linda, a poet and dramatist he once met at a writing workshop, and falls suddenly and violently for her.  One evening, after being entranced by an Ibsen play, and by her company, he has a sudden realisation:

"After we parted company and I was trudging up the hills to my bedsit in Mariaberget I realised two things.
 The first was that I wanted to see her again as soon as possible.
 The second was that was where I had to go, to what I had seen that evening.  Nothing else was good enough, nothing else did it.  That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence.  If it took forty years, so be it, it took forty years.  But I should never lose sight of it, never forget it, that was where I was going.
 There, there." (p.184)

The trouble is that when we get what we want, it rarely seems to be how we imagined it...

In terms of plot, A Man in Love is the story of how Knausgaard fell in love with Linda, and the progress the two make from friends to lovers to married with children; of course, that plot could be written in twenty pages.  However, this is Knausgaard we're talking about, a man who (as a friend jokes) could write ten pages about going to the toilet and make it fascinating.  The book contains the usual minute detail, descriptions of absolutely everything that happens in his life.  Stories branch off into other stories, one memory leads to another.  Somehow, it all works.

On one level, it's the story of a man looking for his place in society and life.  The writer is a foreigner, a boorish, drunken Norwegian in a land of mineral-water-sipping health freaks.  In a country where everything is done by the book, and where, instead of sweets, veggies are served at kids' parties, the chaotic, confused Knausgaard feels even more adrift than he did back home.  He's made to feel low-class and provincial, and his new start threatens to turn sour.

Another view of the novel is the story it tells of the frustration of the writer, when life and absolutely everything gets in the way of what you really want to do - which is write!  He agrees to interviews he really doesn't want to do (and which often go spectacularly wrong), but it is his family life which really angers him.  He resents any time stolen away from him by his wife and kids, loathing his feeling of being a 'feminised house-husband'.  Knausgaard behaves like a 19th-Century man in a modern, equal society - one he hates.  On a side note, I've seen lots of praise and understanding for the book recently from bloggers and reviewers like myself - men, in their mid-thirties, married with small kids...

One name that gets bandied about frequently when discussion turns to Knausgaard is that of Proust, and there seem to be two opposing camps here.  The first, mainly consisting of publishers and blurb writers, is effusive in its Proustian comparisons; the second, comprising critics and grumpy bloggers, slams this as a lazy comparison.  Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle (sitting on the fence, picking out splinters).  Language-wise, there's absolutely no comparison.  Knausgaard uses fairly ordinary language, and he rarely sweeps the reader away by force of expression or beautiful Proustian imagery.  Story-wise though, they are definitely more similar.  Knausgaard's style of slowly, laboriously describing events is obviously Proustian, but there's also a sense of Proust's handling of memory, with recounts going off at tangents, and smells and images evoking long-forgotten memories.  Admittedly though, there are probably better comparisons out there - just ones I haven't encountered yet.

A Man in Love is a little different to A Death in the Family.  It seems even more internal, reflective, and self-flagellating, and there is a deeper sense of something amiss, the writer's madness bubbling to the surface.  Linda herself has a mental illness, and Knausgaard's first attempt to attract Linda's attention, an attempt which ends in a bloody, stunning mess, shows that the writer has (how can I put this tactfully...) 'issues'.  It's painful to read at times, incredibly close to the bone, and this is the genius of Knausgaard, his ability to say the unsayable, the unthinkable... I.  COULD.  NOT.  DO.  THIS. (never - not even in my head).

All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the predecessor, and I do hope that the other four books in the series get translated at some point (even if I suspect that this may be the high point of the series).  As mentioned above though, this is a book which hits very close to home for thirty-something men with kids, trying to balance writing with family duties (ahem...) - and I haven't heard much praise from women...

Anyone?

'Days in the History of Silence' by Merethe Lindstrøm (Review)

My first attempt at requesting books from Netgalley, a couple of years back, ended in confusing cyber-failure, and the e-mail suggestions I've received from them on a regular basis since then have been, well, let's say 'underwhelming'.  A while back though, I saw on Twitter that there was something a little different available, a novel which had won the Nordic Council Literature Prize (the Scandinavian equivalent of the Booker Prize).  I clicked a few buttons, and the publishers (Other Press) were kind enough to allow me an e-copy.  So how did my second Netgalley adventure end up?  Let's find out...
 
*****
Merethe Lindstrøm's Days in the History of Silence (translated by Anne Bruce) took out Scandinavia's top literary prize in 2012.  It's a fairly shortish novel, one which is written in the form of an extended monologue.  Eva, a retired school teacher, lives alone in her house with her older husband, Simon.  If that sounded like a strange sentence, it was deliberately so; Simon has retreated into his shell, and the silence is becoming deafening for his frustrated wife.

While she considers whether or not to fill in the application form for a nursing home, Eva thinks back over her life and particularly over the last few years.  While Simon had a tough start to life as a Jew in 1940s Europe, it is a more recent event which may have triggered his withdrawal, the sacking of the couple's Latvian housekeeper, Marija.  As Eva thinks back to what she might have said to change events, she begins to discover that secrets can come back to haunt you, even when there's nobody to tell them...

Days in the History of Silence has a very tense opening, when a stranger enters the house, for no good reason and leaves after a few nervous minutes.  The event has no real tangible connection with the rest of the novel, and this is very typical for the book.  It is full of unrelated events, occurrences which the reader will try to connect, looking for unspoken links below the surface of the page (or screen!).  It's a very subtle story for the most part, Eva's monologue serving only to keep the most important matters hidden from view.

As Simon's descent into silence becomes more complete, Eva's frustration increases.  Suddenly, she feels as if she is alone, trapped inside a large, empty house:

"I need to tell this to someone, how it feels, how it is so difficult to live with someone who has suddenly become silent.  It is not simply the feeling that he is no longer there.  It is the feeling that you are not either."
(Other Press, 2013)

Eva is understandably upset at being abandoned, emotionally, by her husband; however, it can't be said that she's entirely free from blame herself.

One of the major themes in the book is the importance of the unsaid, and in Eva's house there are plenty of topics which were never mentioned.  The house invasion at the start of the book is a secret which has been kept for years, and Simon was never able to tell their three daughters about his experiences during the war.  When the couple decided to let Marija go, the daughters are unable to understand why their parents would fire a woman who had become a part of the family - and Eva simply cannot bring herself to tell them.  By keeping silent for all these years, Eva has created her own cocoon of silence, one she's unlikely to escape from.

One of the better aspects of the novel is the way it describes the life of the elderly (or, in Eva's case, the not-quite-elderly).  Life goes on elsewhere, but for Eva and Simon it's winding down, leaving them trailing along in the distance - alone, together.  At times, it seems that there are no more words simply because it's too late; the time for them has passed and gone forever.

It wasn't all good though.  Eva's monologue was a little tiring at times - there was nothing really outstanding in the writing, or in her voice, to make the reader enjoy the experience of her company.  The book also places a lot of weight on the reason for Marija's dismissal, dragging out the pivotal event until near the end.  When it finally arrives, it feels like an anti-climax, a revelation that wasn't really worth waiting for (although it does fit in nicely with the understated nature of the novel).  I get the feeling that many people will love this book, but for me it just drifted by.  At times, it was just too understated for its own good...

With all the stories from the past (the intruder, the dying dog, Simon's past, Marija...), you get the impression that there's something there, something that remains tantalisingly beyond reach.  I'm really not certain what it is though.  One thing's for sure - Eva is afraid of what lies ahead:

"Again that thought pops up, that underneath everything, the house, the children, all the years of movement and unrest, there has been this silence.  That it has simply risen to the surface, pushed up by external changes.  Like a splinter of stone is forced up by the innards of the earth, by disturbances in the soil, and gradually comes to light in the spring.  And that is what really frightens me.  How that reminds me of something else.  Is it meaninglessness?"

Perhaps the worst thing for Eva is not the upsetting events of her past.  It's the realisation that this is the way it's going to be from now on - a life of silence and regrets...

'A Death in the Family' by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 6)

The next stop on our IFFP magical mystery tour is Norway, where we'll be looking at a book that has provoked a lot of discussion in literary circles.  It is different, a little unusual, it seems to have been very popular as well - but is it any good?  Let's find out...

*****
A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard (translated by Don Bartlett - from Harvill Secker)
What's it all about?
A Death in the Family is the first part of Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle, a cathartic, six-volume, autobiographical novel.  Knausgaard is a family man, living with his second wife and their three children in Sweden.  Approaching middle age, he feels the pressure of needing to come up with a work of art and is frustrated that his family life may well be depriving him of this opportunity (so far, so creepily familiar...).  So he decides to write about his life - in great detail...

This initial volume is divided into two parts.  In the first, the focus is on Karl Ove's childhood, a rather unusual one spent shuttling between a physically-absent mother and a mentally-absent father, one who appears to be shutting himself off from the world.  The second is centred on the father's death at a young age, an alcohol-fuelled demise which turns out to be messier and more damaging than you could ever have imagined.  In a very Proustian style of writing, Knausgaard examines the aftermath of his father's death in laborious detail, exposing the reader to many things they would rather not see - in a good way, of course.

We sense that Knausgaard is using his writing to try and make sense of his life.  A repeated idea is that childhood is a golden age, where all is new and the possibilities are endless.  However, once we move into adulthood, and particular middle age, the end is nigh, visible on the horizon, and despite knowing this, we are doomed to repeat the same tedious days over and over again until the grave.  While we are supposedly individuals, in the grand scheme of things we are merely anonymous parts of the machine, interchangeable and completely replaceable.  He's a cheery soul, is Karl Ove...

The dominant figure of the novel is, of course, Knausgaard's father.  He is a strange character, a man seemingly trapped in a marriage and family he cares little for, spending as little time with his 'loved ones' as possible.  It is inevitable that he will eventually go off the rails (although only the biggest pessimist could have predicted the manner of his spectacular demise), and it is every bit as inevitable that his son will wear the scars from his relationship with his father.

You see, another Proustian connection here is that Karl Ove (just like Proust's fictionalised Marcel) is not a particularly nice person.  When you paint a complete picture, warts and all, that can hardly come as a surprise, but the writer comes across as an arrogant, selfish (expletive deleted).  He prioritises work over his family (at one point leaving his heavily-pregnant wife in bed at five in the morning to go off and do - or not do - some writing).  As he says near the start of the book:

"I have always had a great need for solitude.  I require huge swathes of loneliness, and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the past five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive.  And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way, my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape."
p.28 (Harvill Secker, 2012)

I suppose his success has justified his methods, but still...

A Death in the Family is definitely a fascinating work, but I'm not sure it's for everyone.  While some bits are enthralling (including the infamous seventy-page section where Karl Ove and his brother attempt to erase the squalid signs of their father's last days), others are equally dull.  One part I found extremely tedious was the story of a New Year's Eve party Karl Ove attempted to attend in his teens, a good chunk of my life I won't be getting back.

Another question I have about the book is what it actually is - is it even fiction?  As far as I can tell, it's completely autobiographical and as honest as it gets, so what actually makes this fiction?  The style of writing?  A clue to the answer to my question may lie in a comment the writer makes when talking about paintings:

"Thus there was always a certain objectivity to them, by which I mean a distance between reality and the portrayal of reality, and it was doubtless in this interlying space where it 'happened', where it appeared, whatever it was I saw, when the world seemed to step forward from the world.  When you didn't just see the incomprehensible in it but came very close to it." p.199

Knausgaard's version of reality is not reality itself, but a close copy, one that allows us to see reality more clearly.  It may be art, but I'm sure it has come at a cost - Knausgaard's family reunions must be a lot of fun ;)

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
I'm really not sure.  It definitely deserved to be recognised in the longlist, but it is a little patchy (inevitable for the kind of style Knausgaard attempts), and as I mentioned above, I'm not even sure if it is really a work of fiction.  I didn't recommend last year's Proustian effort (Peter Nádas' Parallel Stories) for the shortlist, and I think this one will be just outside my top six too.

Will it make the shortlist?
How could it not?  This is the book that everyone seems to have read, and I feel that there is an expectation that it will still be around when the main prize is given out.  Having been longlisted for both the IFFP and the BTBA (the American equivalent), it's a book which will give some weight and glamour to the shortlist - so it'll probably make it :)

*****
That's all from Norway.  Next time we'll be heading south and west, with a brief stop in the Netherlands before reaching our next destination - Wales.

No, really, Wales.  Honest...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Five

Our latest trip for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize once again takes us to snowy Scandinavia, this time to Norway, the setting for Dag Solstad's novella Professor Andersen's Night, translated by Agnes Scott Langeland.  This short work was actually written in 1996, but it has taken a good fifteen years for it to appear in English - insert usual comments about the lack of translated fiction in English here...

*****
What's it all about?
The titular professor, Pål to his friends (pun intended...), is a professor of English literature at the University of Oslo, a divorcé in his mid-fifties and a man who lives, and is comfortable being, alone.  On Christmas Eve, he prepares his traditional yuletide meal, happy to conform to societal norms despite having no real religious beliefs, and after a sumptuous, calorie-laden and alcohol-accompanied feast, he absent-mindedly stands and watches the families in the apartments across the road, each celebrating the day in their own way.

While peering into the windows of his neighbours, suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the good professor is witness to a disturbing crime, a brutal, bare-handed murder which tears him out of his self-imposed hermetic bubble.  However, as he hurries to the telephone to report the crime, he stops... and the call is never made.  This is the start of Professor Andersen's slow descent into depression...

While it would be tempting to think that Professor Andersen's Night is mainly concerned with the unravelling of the crime which begins it, nothing could be further from the truth.  The murder is merely the catalyst for something which has merely been waiting for the right time to emerge, namely the professor's mid-life crisis.  As he attempts to understand why he was unable to make the call (and why he continues to avoid going to the police), Andersen tries to distract himself to avoid thinking about it, drinking with friends, spontaneously leaving Oslo for a few days and then throwing himself back into his research and lecturing.

However, the more he tries to escape into his normal life, the more he realises how empty this has become.  The dinner party at his friends' house and the brief excursion to Trondheim, where he meets another friend and his young family, only show him how alone he is.  On examining his professional life more closely, he realises that he no longer believes in the power and permanence of literature, leaving him unable to go on as if nothing were wrong...

Towards the end of the novel, the mental strain has also begun to take its toll on his physical well-being.  Like a Norwegian Raskolnikov, his guilt is slowly tearing him apart, rendering his daily life unbearable, unmanageable...  Will he pull through?

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

I'm not overly convinced...  It's a fascinating little book, if a little uneven, but I'm not sure that it's one which will win over the majority of readers.  There are times when it goes a little flat, not a good sign in a book of just 154 pages, and it's not always a smooth read.  That may be owing to the translation, which, while adequate, feels a little stilted and forced at times.  Yes, the professor probably does speak in this slightly unusual manner in the original, but some of the word choices felt a little... well, wrong.

Will it make the shortlist?
I'll stick my neck out and say no.  Solstad has been longlisted twice before (and shortlisted) once, so he has form, but I can't imagine that the jury will pick this one ahead of nine of the others - unless, of course, they're looking for something short to counterbalance any weighty novels they may have chosen!  On the other hand, I could see this being the kind of book that will have some fervent supporters, who are entranced by the depiction of the professor's downward spiral - all it takes is one or two die-hards to sway the group's opinion...

*****
That'll do for today.  I'm dragging myself off now to knock off another few pages of Parallel Stories, a book I'll be reading on and off over the next few weeks (the anti-Andersen, as it were!).  Join me next time for a trip to some warmer climes - I'm fed up with all this literary snow ;)