The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig
| The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig | |
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| Category: Literary Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Lesley Mason
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| Summary: Brovig's debut novel takes us to a small coastal town in Norway where Else Dybdahl lives, with her daughter and granddaughter, a quietly ordinary life - until the return of a schooldays boyfriend takes her back to the time not so long ago, when life was harder, and to the night that changed everything. A finely written debut reflecting on how things have changed since the 1970s - and how some things haven't. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 263 | Date: March 2014 |
| Publisher: Hutchinson | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9780091954291 | |
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Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen.
Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives in the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter of her own, but still spends many a night not coming home. She must have met someone the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter and her granddaughter. A quiet life, but not such a bad one.
But then she bumps into Lars. He's come back. He's taken over his parents' old place, and brought a city wife not much older that Marianne (Else's daughter) and their kids. He's made a life for himself too.
Brøvig's tale isn't so much about what brought the two of them to where they are now, but more a simple contrast between who they were and who they are. What's happened in between is passed over.
Back in 1974, Else was a child, rowing on the lake for fish to go with the potatoes for dinner. Her father was a failing farmer-fisherman, who spent as much time in the boathouse with a jar of homebrew as he did on the land or the water. Her mother worked hard at her sewing, tried not to say the wrong thing, saved coffee and dusted off the best room for when the pastor came to visit. And kept her bruises hidden.
The Pastor was of that strain of Christianity that I personally think of as vindictive and vicious. He chose his sermons from those parts of the Bible that speak of a wrathful god and not a loving one. He speaks of retribution for the sin not forgiveness of the sinner. And his sermons always appear to be directed personally. With intent.
It's a strange world of intense repression and small freedoms. A world where Else cannot leave the house without a reason to be going, a chore to be done, or school to attend. A world where dreams of getting away are only to be expected. But it is also a world where, once outside the farm, the paths and roads could take her anywhere. She wanders the woods freely. Rowing or skating on the lake are fraught with dangers un-considered. Getting to town, to school means taking the ferry. A world where, having snook out, a young girl might hop on the back of a boyfriend's moped, or sneak into his father's Cadillac in a locked, candlelit garage.
It is a world of gossip after church.
It is a world turned upside down, for a short while at least, when the circus comes to town.
By 2009, the world is a different place. There's no doubt that Marianne's unwed motherhood was just as frowned upon as Else's transgressions all those years ago, but no-one seems to hold it as a personal grudge. Pastors have come and gone. Attitudes have changed. Marianne has her own life to live, and Else has the sense to let her, and to love her all the same.
Mother love. That is what's at the heart of this simple book. How a mother will love a daughter, how she will show it and not show it, how it is mostly contained and eked out as if rationed, until, maybe, there is a point at which it might explode.
It's also a story of families. How they relate, what they share and what they protect and how they lie to each other and to the world around them. Maybe in part it's about how we also lie to ourselves, in order to be able to go on doing what we need to do.
The whole is suffused in the isolation of the Norwegian coastal town perfectly captured with only the merest hint of description.
This isn't the Scandinavia of current crime vogue, but much more akin to the writing of Tove Jansson. If you like this you'll love The True Deceiver. For a darker take on growing up in the north, I also enjoyed At the Edge of Light by Maria Peura
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig at Amazon.com.
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