By Jon Fosse
I read this on the flight back from Cairo on the 24th of December, 2024. It’s a blue Fitzcarraldo, and one of the odder ones I’ve read. The story (if it can be called a story, it’s more an evocation of an atmosphere and a cinematic presentation of recollections) centres on an old woman lying on a bench in her house, isolated in a Norwegian fjord, staring at the window, recalling the night twenty years ago when her husband went out to row on the fjord and never returned, and through that, remembering or imagining her family’s history, right back to her husband’s great-great-grandmother, Aliss, and their internal lives and tragedies.
It’s a difficult read. There isn’t a period for the first 40 pages, and it’s written in a verbose stream-of-consciousness, interspersed with doubt, questions, and a colliding miasma of past and present, intermingling generations with common experiences, flashing backwards and forwards decades, and returning continually to her lying on the bench, in sorrow, unable to leave the memory of that fateful night.
It is admirably well-written, with some gorgeously touching scenes, but elusive and challenging.
Here’s an extract—I quite like the description of them meeting!
[…] and she never really fully under-
stood him, not from the first time she met him, she thinks,
and maybe that was why she felt so close to him, from the
first time they saw each other, when he came walking up
to her, with his long black hair, and from then on, and up
until now, or in any case until he was gone, it had been the
two of them, she thinks, and why was it like that? why?
what ties two people together? or at least tied her to him,
and he, well yes he was tied to her, him too, but maybe not
quite as much as she was tied to him, but still, yes, yes, tied
together, they were, of course they were, he to her, she to
him, but maybe she was more tied to him than he was to
her, that may well be, but does that mean anything? no
why think something like that? she thinks, because he did
stay with her after all, he didn’t leave, he stayed here with
her, right up until he just disappeared, she thinks, he was
with her, from the first time she saw him come walking
up, and then he looked at her, and she just stood there,
and they looked at each other, smiled at each other, and it
was as though they were old friends, as though they had
always known each other, in a way, just that it had been
such an immeasurably long time since they had last seen
each other, and that’s why they were so happy, to see each
other again made them both so happy that happiness took
over and steered them, it steered them to each other, as
though this was something that was gone, that had been
missing their whole lives, but now it was here, at last, it
was here now, that’s how it felt then, that first time they
met, completely by accident, and it wasn’t hard, it wasn’t
frightening, no, it was like it was obvious, like there was
nothing to do about it, it was certain, somehow, and
whether she said or did one thing or another it was kind
of like it didn’t make any difference, it happened the way
it was meant to happen, it had all been decided in ad-
vance, she thinks, yes, yes that’s how it was, there was
nothing to do about it, but it took its time of course, he
wasn’t exactly a hothead after all, and she wasn’t either,
and they somehow didn’t need to be either, it was there,
and it was the way it was, whether they did anything or
didn’t do anything, she thinks, but eventually at some
point there was a letter from him, a letter came, and he
wrote how hard it had been to find out her address, wrote
a little about day-to-day life, not much more than that,
just a couple words, a few short ordinary words. no big
words in any case, but it was enough. he didn’t need any-
thing more, and she answered, yes of course she did. and
it was a little embarrassing to think about the letter she
sent, she thinks, because even if he didn’t really know
what to make of big words she did, she wrote big words,
but she can’t think about that, because if there was one
thing he didn’t like it was big words, they just lied and
covered things up, those big words, they didn’t let what
really was live and breathe but just carried it off into
something that wanted to be big, that’s what he thought,
and that’s how he was, he liked the things that didn’t want
to be big, she thinks, in life, in everything, and that’s how
…
Yes, it’s all like that.