After the sun by Jonas Eika

After the Sun by Jonas Eika

Danish fiction

Original title – Efter Solen

Translator – Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg

Source – personal copy

Every time the booker or old IFFP list comes out there is always open or two books on the list that have just passed me by I especially this last couple of years don’t keep my ear as close to the ground as I once did. So this was one I wasn’t aware of which was the same for the title last year from Lolli editions it seems like a publisher I should maybe keep a closer eye on. This is the first book by Jonas Eika to be translated and is his second book this won the Nordic council Literature prize as Paul on our shadow jury point out this is a prize that has former winners such as Dag Solstad, Son, Kim Line and one of the other Longest writers Jon Fosse. So  for me it must have something about it so I picked it up last week and read the first story but just didn’t connect so I decided yesterday to just sit and read it cover to cover it is under two hundred pages and is a collection of five stories but two are the same story at different angles.

He was sickly pale in the way that people tend to be in pictures from the nineties. “This is me at KFC when the first one opened in Denmark.. Me at the first Burger King, did you know they proposed a whopper-big Mac mash up, in the name of world peace?.. Here I am at subway.. dominoes..The bagel company when they opened their first shop on Gothersgade in 94 I sear, tasting these things for the first time was completely…How should I say unique. Like I was tasting them and only them.I always take pictures for the first time

This description of various fast food and the whhoper Mac mash up made me smile.

I think the reason I didn’t connect with it initially is  the style of his writing which is fast and jarring at times and the first story Alvin our narrator arrive back to fix the bank software as that is his job this is where his path is halted as he arrives the servers he is due to work on and the bank its self has collapsed the story follows the aftermath of this but then like most of the stories in the collection go here and there. The one story that really caught me is the middle story in the collection Rachel Nevada which to me had one of the greatest change of plot in a short story I have ever read and the story follows an elderly couple who had lost both there daughters and then decided the only way for them to cope with this is to sell up and hit the road and this is how they end up at Rachel Nevada this leads to the Husband in the story getting drawn to an object in the desert that seems to be calling out leading to Antonio want to find out more about it.This small town is just near Area 51 the heart of what is UFO country even down to the A’le inn the local pub. But then there is a great plot change and a minor character that had already appeared just in passing we get a bio of her career as a singer songwriter I found myself trying to find if this was an actual singer as the bi was so real. Other stories deal with beach boys and rich customers on the seats.

Antonio awoke almost choking on his own breathing. The pain burned sour in his throat. coughing made the plastic tube writhe in the wound. He took it out of his mouth, leaned his head back and opened the passageway. Then he got back up on his legs and shock the images out of his head, images of jackrabbits with long erect ears and black spotted coats.Hundreds of jackrabbits hopping across the steppes, dry lakes and mountainsides, the jackrabbit being a kind of Totem anti animal in Karen Ruthio’s universe.

Antonio in the desert sees images and also links to the latter part of the story Rachel Nevada.

There is a lot of talk of the Maximalist novel well I think what we have hear is the maximalist short story what Jonas has done is pack lots of ideas they just fall of the page as we see a mind that drifts here and there in the stories hence they seem at times chaotic but isn’t modern life chaotic at times. In an interview I saw with him and his translator he talk about writing just after his nights and just having to get the words out but also means it was a hard book to translated as it has a a feel of being here and there but that is how it was written I was reminded of Burroughs and the effect was like the first time I read Burroughs I remember just eating up Naked lunch then his two trilogies which used the cut up technique this has a feel of that as I said it had a feel of his work also Kerouac that energy you get from On the road which I am just reading at the moment as well.As I said this is the opposite of a the likes of the craved down Raymond craver this is like as he said in the interview the Ursula le Guin essay about writing sci as being like a carrier bag and that is what this is a bit of this and that all stuck together it a fusion of ideas a story that could be a dozen novels in one. This is one of those gems from the longest that I wouldn’t discovered it maybe is chaotic and disorienting but it is also brilliant vivid captures the zeitgeist of the moment and a fresh view of the world.Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – +A one to watch so much energy in these stories maybe the first collection of Maximalist short story collection.