The seed by Tarjei Vesaas

Norwegian fiction

Original title – Kimen

Translator – Kenneth G. Chapman

Source – Personal copy

I move on to one of my all-time favourite writers in Tarjei Vesaas; although I have only read a few books by him, there is something about how he describes his world: the second you open a book by him, you fall into it. I have a number of his books on my shelves, and I had a look at them all for men; this stood out as it sees him move from his earlier books, which are maybe the lesser known of his works now, to the later books that are more symbolic and set in the world he lives in the place almost becomes a character in the lot of the books I have read the ice in the Ice Palace. This Island reminds me of the Island we spent a summer or two on when I was younger. The cost of Donegal Islands is that they are such little microcosms in themselves, although there was never a murder like in the book.

 

Inside the summer-hot barn itself there was commotion and turmoil – in sharp contrast to outside. The youngest sow was having her swarm of young.

A girl sat there and saw that everything went as it should. But she sat staring and absent-minded.

The barn was full of buzzing flies. All the windows and doors were open. The strong sun intensified the odor from the pig pens.

The flies buzzed dully, as if on the point of falling asleep in a dark

corner.

The girl was young. She sat bent over on a stool. Leaned forward with her adolescent arms pressed against her breast. What was happening in front of her eyes was nothing new to her and it was going well, so it was something else that was causing her tenseness, her sadness. She thought: I’m not happy. Things should be different.

How? I don’t know, just somehow

The young girl looking after the pigs when he meets her

This novella is brutal at times. A Troubled man with apparent mental health issues comes to the tiny island where Pig farming is the primary industry and way of life and kills a young girl in the height of summer. This sets off a chain of events where the locals all go feral and chase this man down, and the brother of the dead girls kills the man. This book mixes the brutality of nature with the darkness of the human soul and the way one moment can change so many lives and affect so many. All this is mirrored as a mother pig eats its own young, A piece that reminds me of the line in Snatch where a gangster talks about how pigs will eat anything. This is also a scene in the film Hanibal where a foe of Hanibal ends up getting eaten by the pigs. We also have echoes of the madness in Lord of the Flies. One of the characters is called Piggy, and I wonder if Golding had come across this book as it came out 14 years before the lord of the Flies, and one also thinks of the island-wide madness of Whicker man. But this also is the way he uses the scenery of his homeland. In this case, it adds to the darkness on a bright summer day, which, when reading it, can send a chill down your spine. Sun and Darkness can lead to madness. One only has to think of the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing, where heat adds to the tension and leads people to act differently.

The baby pigs lay in a pile in a corner. They had ducked down, and lay there unmoving. Something in them had forced them into this position. The danger. The tumult. Something incomprehen-sible. They ducked down and lay still.

A crash. The pen gave way under a heavy side blow. The sows tumbled out into the barnyard and headed for the people standing there. They attacked the people – at the same time that they were fighting with each other to the death and gashing each other’s sides.

They attacked everything that moved.

The two men and the woman ran for the house. The girl slipped. back into the barn.

But the devil was in the sows now. No sooner had the people begun to collect themselves a bit behind the closed door of the tidy house than the door flew open. They had not thought to lock it, and the door opened inwards. The sows were suddenly there and stuck their bloody snouts through the door. They stopped and stood still an instant to take aim.

The effect of this sight on the three people in the room was para-lyzing. An instant of fear. Wild beasts. Demons.

What was it? What would happen?

Nothing! It was only the two sows that Bergit carried food to many times a day! No; they were transformed. They were something else. Bestiality itself stuck its snout into human life: dark, filthy and consuming.

Thje brutal nature of the pigs later mirrored in the islanders

This saw Vesas shift in his writing style; he had written 12 books before this, and the books after this all have a more symbolic nature. But also his world of rural Norway, which, like I said in the start, really draws me in with his writing, is that mix of symbolic world and the rural Norway he so loved, which becomes another character in his books. Do you know any other writers whose place is so connected to their works?

 

                                                                                                                                                    Brightly Shining by Igvild Rishøi

Norweigan fiction

Orignal title – Stargate – en julefortelling

Translator – Caroline Waight

Source – Review copy

There is nothing better than an unexpected review copy that actually matches something upcoming, and this literally fell on the doorstep a few days after I had mentioned her new month, Norway in November, by Meredith (Dolce Bellezza Blog), one of the fellow judges on the Shadow Booker panel. So, as I often think, the is a synchronicity to book blogging. So this is the first novel from a talented short story and children’s writer appeared with its wintery theme around a family in the run-up to Christmas. She has previously won the Norwegian book critic prizes. It is a perfect first book for Norway in November. The book is about a family in which two daughters decide to help their father, who is out of work. So when they find a job at the Christmas tree lot is available.

And Monday came and Tuesday and Wednesday, and he talked about the cabin we would buy if he could just get a regular job. Thursday came and Fri-day, and he talked about the path and the fence and how we’d sit out on the doorstep and look up at the Big Dipper, and then it was Saturday, and there was a knock at the door.

Dad let go of my hair and stood up off the bed. But ours wasn’t really a flat where people came knocking.

Only Aronsen came knocking round our flat, I’m calling the police, he’d say, but he never called the police. But before, when I was little, I thought he would. He’d be standing there in his dressing gown and I’d be clutching Dad’s legs and crying, don’t call, don’t call, until Aronsen looked down and said, hush now, I’m not calling anybody, I’m just trying to get this into your dad’s head.

Dad is a violent drunk at times

Ronja, the ten-year-old daughter, first sees the job on the Christmas tree lot and initially thinks her father will be perfect for the `Job. He does take it, but then he is drawn back to the pub, so the cupboards start to go bare again at this point, the older sister Melissa steps in and takes her father’s job selling Christmas tres a world as she observes isn’t as cheerful as it may seem to sell the tres is a hard job and those doing it aren’t that full of the Christmas spirit. But she puts her head down as her sister dodges the Drunken father, a neighbour dying to report the father and his daughters to social services. We see a family on the deg a world of getting by day to day and the bond between to sisters. But there is also some great characters they meet at the tree lot. This is a book that will break your heart and then see the hope of the two sisters.

“Melissa,” Tommy yelled. “Come here.”

Melissa was sitting on the ground, midway through righting a fir. She looked up from underneath the branches and crawled out. She looked scared.

“Relax,” Tommy said, “It was me who went and got her.”

He walked over to the shed and opened the door.

“Take a seat,” he said. “Have a ginger biscuit.” There was warmth inside, and a radio, and the floor brown with dirt. Some children singing “O Holy Night.” I sat down on one camping stool, Tommy sat on the other. Melissa stayed standing in the doorway. A thrill of hope, sang the children.

The weary world rejoices.

“Melissa,” said Tommy. “Your sister can’t spend all day sitting out there on a box when it’s below freezing out.”

The sister freezing but trying to get by the best they can

I must admit I am a fan of the sad Christmas story from Dickens with Scrooge, a story tinged with Sadness, then films like A Boy’s Christmas and, of course, It’s a Wonderful Life. But you know what? One of my all-time favourite Christmas stories is from the Late Paul Auster, his Auggie Wrens Christmas story, which was filmed by Wayne Wang as part of the film Smoke when Auggie tells William Hurt’s character who had been asked to write a Christmas story for New york times and tells of a boy that dropped a wallet whilst stealing and how Auggie went found a blind woman who thought he was the grandson who had stolen from his store and they have dinner and he steals a camera from a pile he finds in a room at the woman’s house but has in the meantime had Christmas lunch with her act as the grandson Hope and love in denial at the same time just perfect like this. It has hope that comes and goes with love and fear. I was going to say about how it would be ideal. Book to be made into a film like Auggie Wren’s story was, only to google the original title of the book and find it is being made into a movie (let’s hope it isn’t then ruined by a Hollywood take on it ). This is prime Ken Roach material if it is to be made into English. The heartbreak of drunken father-daughters getting by would suit his style of filmmaking so well. This book is perfect for a winter evening in the build-up to Christmas as we follow Melissa and Ronja. One sister sells trees, and the other tries to avoid social services and just get by. Do you have a favourite Christmas story or film?