Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "nordic"
Review: the mystery of the new Mankell
Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell
US: New Press. April 1, 2009. Isbn: 1595584366
In his 26th novel, Sweden’s top crime writer has eschewed the genre that has seen him sell 30 million books. Even so, fans of his Inspector Wallander novels will find much of what they love about the Skåne detective in the narrator of “Italian Shoes”—only given even more depth by the constant focus on a man struggling with guilt and emotional silence.
Fredrik is a surgeon who abandoned his career a decade ago because of a mistake he made during an operation. He refused to acknowledge his error and went to live alone on a remote island. One morning he sees a woman standing on the frozen sea. He discovers that she’s the girlfriend he abandoned as a young man.
Harriet’s arrival forces Fredrik to meet a series of people from his past. He thought he could cut himself off on his island. As he realizes he can’t, he finds the allure of companionship attractive, but struggles to manage these new relationships.
This is a devastatingly honest and keenly personal novel. It ranks with Norwegian Per Petterson’s “Out Stealing Horses” for its marvelous portrayal of withdrawal from society—and its consequences. Mankell writes with a measured pace that’s in tune with the frozen weather and the slow body of the aging Fredrik.
Though “Italian Shoes” is a departure for Mankell, he examines a topic common to crime novels—death. But he reverses the crime novel’s way of looking at death. He’s not concerned here with how death occurs. Rather he wants to understand why anyone should care whether they live or die.
Crime writers create a violent death, to show how the remaining characters experience life in extreme circumstances. Here Mankell depicts a man who essentially stopped living and who rediscovers life when faced with the impending death of Harriet.
“Before I die,” Fredrik says, “I must know why I’ve lived.” In his dour, bitter way, Mankell has the answer.
This is the life, Part 3: Denmark
Where better to send a bunch of crime writers and their fans than a prison? The Horsens Crime Festival in Jutland, the part of Denmark linked to mainland Europe, did just that last month.
Horsens prison was in use until three years ago. By the end it was a fairly humane place – this is Denmark, after all. But the museum set up in its old cells demonstrates how rough it was back in the mid-1800s. There are various implements for punishment, including a table with leather restraints for the waist, wrists and ankles. Walking through the upper galleries on my own, I looked out of the window and watched a car drive by beyond the walls. I felt a sudden pang of such desolating loneliness that I hurried down to the yard, where the crime festival was being held just to be among people.
(Not before I checked out the display of confiscated pornography from different eras and a rather horrifying pair of brown leather mittens to be locked onto the hands of inveterate Onanists.)
Almost all the authors were Scandinavian, which means that many of them were familiar names, as that sub-genre appears to go from strength to strength. (Swede Camilla Läckberg, however, wasn’t there, which was a shame because I’ve been wanting to meet her ever since I saw the picture of her taking a bubble bath on her website – you think I’m kidding? I bet it gets a lot of traffic.) Organized by the Horsens Library, the only other non-Nordic writer was Don Winslow. One to watch, from what I saw was a smooth and rather dapper Swedish writer named Mons Kallentoft.
My Danish publisher Gyldendal brought me to the festival, where I was interviewed by Niels Lillelund, culture correspondent with Jyllands-Posten. That’s certainly the most famous Danish newspaper where I live. You may remember it’s the paper which published the famous cartoons of Muhammad, which sent millions of Muslims into a rage. Niels, I hasten to add, didn’t draw the cartoons, but he did do a fine job of interviewing me at the book festival about my second Palestinian crime novel A Grave in Gaza, which is just out now in Danish.
Horsens is a quiet provincial town with a charming central section where the croci were just in bloom in the lush grass of the city park. We were there long enough for my editor Helle Stavnem to translate the names of some Danish pastries (one which has a large blob of yellow curd at the center is called “the baker’s bad eye.” Yum.)
The visit to Horsens was over quickly, however, and we were off to Copenhagen, where I stayed right beside the University library, around the corner from Tycho Brahe’s observatory. (There are various theories about Brahe’s possible murder by rival astronomer Johannes Kepler, which I was discussing only today with Tel Aviv University optical historian Raz Chen….)
The palace complex in Copenhagen is quite beautiful, particularly in the early morning fog that comes in off the sea smelling of lentil soup. The Royal Library was my favorite building, or more precisely the wide courtyard leading to it, grassy and empty but for a woman smoking a cigarette on a bench and a gardener pruning bushes. The lights from the red brick building were inviting in the overcast day and made me hanker for my university days.
Outside the palace, on the wall of the canal, a warning to boats: “Proceed with caution. Sculpture under water. Merman with seven sons.” Below the freezing water, eight figures, a man and seven boys. Eerily their heads were oxidized turquoise so that they stood out from their bodies. They seemed to be grasping for the surface.
Another highlight: the Frue Kirke, the cathedral of “Kooben-hawn” (as they call it). Very Spartan design and quite striking.
I dropped by my local agent, Eva Haagerup, at Leonhardt & Hoier. The office is in a neighborhood of central Copenhagen called Pisserenden, because – there’s no nice way to put this – it used to be a low-rent area where people would piss in the streets. Now it’s rather nice with a lot of bars and restaurants, but Eva says that at night there’s still some outdoor watersports.
On the way to the airport, I stopped at the national tv channel for an interview with an energetic, intelligent journalist named Adam Holm. Why can’t US tv people be like this? They’re all so blow-dried and empty. Adam and I arranged to meet in Jerusalem some time.
I picked up a couple of books: one by a Dane whose previous books I’ve enjoyed, Peter Hoeg (“The Quiet Girl”), and another a historical novel about Copenhagen by a Swede (“The Royal Physician's Visit”). I’ll blog about them soon.
Horsens prison was in use until three years ago. By the end it was a fairly humane place – this is Denmark, after all. But the museum set up in its old cells demonstrates how rough it was back in the mid-1800s. There are various implements for punishment, including a table with leather restraints for the waist, wrists and ankles. Walking through the upper galleries on my own, I looked out of the window and watched a car drive by beyond the walls. I felt a sudden pang of such desolating loneliness that I hurried down to the yard, where the crime festival was being held just to be among people.
(Not before I checked out the display of confiscated pornography from different eras and a rather horrifying pair of brown leather mittens to be locked onto the hands of inveterate Onanists.)
Almost all the authors were Scandinavian, which means that many of them were familiar names, as that sub-genre appears to go from strength to strength. (Swede Camilla Läckberg, however, wasn’t there, which was a shame because I’ve been wanting to meet her ever since I saw the picture of her taking a bubble bath on her website – you think I’m kidding? I bet it gets a lot of traffic.) Organized by the Horsens Library, the only other non-Nordic writer was Don Winslow. One to watch, from what I saw was a smooth and rather dapper Swedish writer named Mons Kallentoft.
My Danish publisher Gyldendal brought me to the festival, where I was interviewed by Niels Lillelund, culture correspondent with Jyllands-Posten. That’s certainly the most famous Danish newspaper where I live. You may remember it’s the paper which published the famous cartoons of Muhammad, which sent millions of Muslims into a rage. Niels, I hasten to add, didn’t draw the cartoons, but he did do a fine job of interviewing me at the book festival about my second Palestinian crime novel A Grave in Gaza, which is just out now in Danish.
Horsens is a quiet provincial town with a charming central section where the croci were just in bloom in the lush grass of the city park. We were there long enough for my editor Helle Stavnem to translate the names of some Danish pastries (one which has a large blob of yellow curd at the center is called “the baker’s bad eye.” Yum.)
The visit to Horsens was over quickly, however, and we were off to Copenhagen, where I stayed right beside the University library, around the corner from Tycho Brahe’s observatory. (There are various theories about Brahe’s possible murder by rival astronomer Johannes Kepler, which I was discussing only today with Tel Aviv University optical historian Raz Chen….)
The palace complex in Copenhagen is quite beautiful, particularly in the early morning fog that comes in off the sea smelling of lentil soup. The Royal Library was my favorite building, or more precisely the wide courtyard leading to it, grassy and empty but for a woman smoking a cigarette on a bench and a gardener pruning bushes. The lights from the red brick building were inviting in the overcast day and made me hanker for my university days.
Outside the palace, on the wall of the canal, a warning to boats: “Proceed with caution. Sculpture under water. Merman with seven sons.” Below the freezing water, eight figures, a man and seven boys. Eerily their heads were oxidized turquoise so that they stood out from their bodies. They seemed to be grasping for the surface.
Another highlight: the Frue Kirke, the cathedral of “Kooben-hawn” (as they call it). Very Spartan design and quite striking.
I dropped by my local agent, Eva Haagerup, at Leonhardt & Hoier. The office is in a neighborhood of central Copenhagen called Pisserenden, because – there’s no nice way to put this – it used to be a low-rent area where people would piss in the streets. Now it’s rather nice with a lot of bars and restaurants, but Eva says that at night there’s still some outdoor watersports.
On the way to the airport, I stopped at the national tv channel for an interview with an energetic, intelligent journalist named Adam Holm. Why can’t US tv people be like this? They’re all so blow-dried and empty. Adam and I arranged to meet in Jerusalem some time.
I picked up a couple of books: one by a Dane whose previous books I’ve enjoyed, Peter Hoeg (“The Quiet Girl”), and another a historical novel about Copenhagen by a Swede (“The Royal Physician's Visit”). I’ll blog about them soon.
Thriller Bugbear #69: Plot-Point Techno Madness!
Much as I love Nordic crime fiction, the Europewide megaseller “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson made me want to throw knives like the Swedish chef on The Muppet Show. Why?
Two reasons.
First, the minor reason. Written by a (tragically deceased) Swedish journalist, the book is entirely in the style of a magazine article. Complete with page after page of “research.” It’d be enough for the author to tell me that Swedish women are often assaulted by men. I don’t need five pages of real background. A writer ought to understand that the greater the temptation for the reader to skim, the worse the book is. You end up with a good 250 page mystery trapped inside a 600 page monster.
Overloading with journalistic background is a common technique in contemporary thrillers and mysteries. It’s as though making things up was somehow a distortion of reality. Whereas it actually gets you a lot closer to reality than journalism or journalistic techniques, because it opens up the reader emotionally. (That’s what I’ve found with my Palestinian detective series.)
Second, the major reason. The Internet.
In “Dragon Tattoo,” the eponymous heroine is the now generic thriller/mystery character: the Internet hacker genius. Whenever Larsson needs to inject some new information or to unravel a tricky plot point, his hacker opens up her laptop and links into www.secretgovernmentinformation.com, the well-known (to fiction writers) site where all governments, in particular their intelligence networks, store material they want to be sure is available only to fictional hacker geniuses (and by proxy to thriller writers).
“Dragon Tattoo” isn’t the worst offender. Just the biggest seller.
But I’m only naming names here because poor old Larsson is dead. Those (here unnamed) living writers who use this technique ought to be ashamed of themselves.
In my novels the only time the Internet comes up is when detective Omar Yussef’s granddaughter sets up a website for him in her attempt to make him seem more professional. “The Palestine Agency for Detection,” as she calls her site, is merely embarrassing to Omar. No plot-point-shifting Houdini act there.
The Internet has essentially taken over from the Mossad as the thriller writer’s cure-all. In the old days, if there was something your main character couldn’t figure out, all he had to do was get in touch with the nearest Mossad agent, who’d be sure to know all the secrets in the world and was happy to pass them on with a few dark words about never forgetting the Holocaust and a cheerful “Shalom.”
As a resident of Israel, I can tell you the Mossad doesn’t operate that way. Neither does the Internet.
So stop writing books that pretend it does. (I wonder how you say that in Swedish...)
Two reasons.
First, the minor reason. Written by a (tragically deceased) Swedish journalist, the book is entirely in the style of a magazine article. Complete with page after page of “research.” It’d be enough for the author to tell me that Swedish women are often assaulted by men. I don’t need five pages of real background. A writer ought to understand that the greater the temptation for the reader to skim, the worse the book is. You end up with a good 250 page mystery trapped inside a 600 page monster.
Overloading with journalistic background is a common technique in contemporary thrillers and mysteries. It’s as though making things up was somehow a distortion of reality. Whereas it actually gets you a lot closer to reality than journalism or journalistic techniques, because it opens up the reader emotionally. (That’s what I’ve found with my Palestinian detective series.)
Second, the major reason. The Internet.
In “Dragon Tattoo,” the eponymous heroine is the now generic thriller/mystery character: the Internet hacker genius. Whenever Larsson needs to inject some new information or to unravel a tricky plot point, his hacker opens up her laptop and links into www.secretgovernmentinformation.com, the well-known (to fiction writers) site where all governments, in particular their intelligence networks, store material they want to be sure is available only to fictional hacker geniuses (and by proxy to thriller writers).
“Dragon Tattoo” isn’t the worst offender. Just the biggest seller.
But I’m only naming names here because poor old Larsson is dead. Those (here unnamed) living writers who use this technique ought to be ashamed of themselves.
In my novels the only time the Internet comes up is when detective Omar Yussef’s granddaughter sets up a website for him in her attempt to make him seem more professional. “The Palestine Agency for Detection,” as she calls her site, is merely embarrassing to Omar. No plot-point-shifting Houdini act there.
The Internet has essentially taken over from the Mossad as the thriller writer’s cure-all. In the old days, if there was something your main character couldn’t figure out, all he had to do was get in touch with the nearest Mossad agent, who’d be sure to know all the secrets in the world and was happy to pass them on with a few dark words about never forgetting the Holocaust and a cheerful “Shalom.”
As a resident of Israel, I can tell you the Mossad doesn’t operate that way. Neither does the Internet.
So stop writing books that pretend it does. (I wonder how you say that in Swedish...)
The Snow Queen of Crime: Monica Kristensen’s Writing Life
On a recent trip to Oslo, I lunched with my publisher there Hakan Haket and an astonishingly fascinating local crime writer named Monica Kristensen. Extraordinarily charismatic, she has a trove of stories unlike anything one tends to come across in typical book chats. A Norwegian with a doctorate in glaciology from Cambridge University, Monica has led polar expeditions to retrace the route of her countryman Roald Amundsen to the South Pole. Out on the ice, she’s eaten dog meat – “chewy” – and polar bear meat – “smelly” – out of necessity. She also forced her way into the extremely macho world of polar exploration and, as a tall, striking blonde, became one of the most well-known and controversial scientists in Scandinavia. Over lunch she entertained me with her latest research on the tragic trip to the South Pole of Capt. Robert Scott, one of the last untarnished heroes of the British Empire. At least, he is now--until Monica writes a book on him, which I’m quite sure would cause enormous controversy in Britain…Though I’m sworn to secrecy about what she’s dug up on him.
Before you Nordic crime fans rush out to find her books, note that her work is yet to be published in English. I’ve decided that I’ll include on this blog writers whose work isn’t available in English. I want readers to be able to compare the way writers live when they work in a “small” language like Norwegian, as opposed to English-language writers who have such a large natural readership. It's something that I find very interesting as I travel Europe, meeting other writers and talking about their lives. I should add that Hakan rates Monica’s crime novels (which are set on a small island above the Arctic Circle called Svalbard where Monica lives part of the year) as the best of the current crop of Nordic crime writers—and he knows good crime fiction (He publishes me in Norwegian, after all!) Sharp-eyed publishers looking for a wonderful discovery in the burgeoning Nordic crime subgenre ought to contact Monica’s agent Eva Haagerup at Leonhardt & Høier in Copenhagen (eva@leonhardt-hoier.dk).
How long did it take you to get published?
Since I am a well known person in Norway, I have never had any problems getting published. This may not be an advantage. Resistance is necessary to develop writing skills.
Would you recommend any books on writing?
Accomplishment in writing is a craft as well as a talent. You really do benefit from criticism as well as encouragement. However, there is no recipe, so my advice is to look for books that you feel will inspire. If pressed, I would recommend “Creating Unforgettable Characters” by Linda Seger
What’s a typical writing day?
My writing day is quite organized. I get up early (about six thirty) to spend some time with my seven year old daughter before school. We cycle there and I exercise when I get back home. Then I sit down at the desk and work till about three o’clock (including a brief lunch break). I stop around four and spend time with my daughter. If I feel like it, I work for an hour or two after six o’clock. I love writing, so I have to stop myself from working during the weekends. But I allow myself to read relevant material, do research or note down ideas in a little black book that I carry with me everywhere.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
My latest book is “Operation Fritham”, published in Norway in June this year.
A small group of war veterans is gathering on Svalbard to commemorate a tragic incident during the Second World War – Operation Fritham. Germans, Norwegians and British former soldiers are present. But tensions among the former enemies are nothing compared to the difficulties Knut Fjeld experiences when he discovers that a civilian, a murderer, has taken the identity of one of the old soldiers and hidden among the veterans.
I particularly like this book because I feel that I have been able to describe the claustrophobic atmosphere in northern Norway in 1941, during the first part of the war - when the Third Reich in secrecy prepared an invasion of the northern Soviet Union across the Norwegian and Finnish borders. Nearly two hundred thousand German and Austrian soldiers occupied the county of Sør-Varanger with a pre-war population of about ten thousand. In the middle of a cauldron of soldiers, spies of various nations, traitors and quislings, one decent country police officer is fighting a desperate battle to protect the innocent and reveal the identity of a cold blooded murderer. Fifty years on, Knut Fjeld finds his old files and continues his quest for justice.
How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?
I would say that I float freely when the writing is good. No gravity, just splendid views over a fantasy landscape. I hardly ever think formula. I must therefore choose alternative c).
However, I am aware of the requirements of the crime fiction genre and try to respect the expectations of my readers. Stretching the envelope of genre must not be felt as a disappointment for the reader.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
I do not have a favorite sentence, unless “Let there be light” from the Book of Genesis can count? There are so many brilliant descriptions and sentences, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Somerset Maugham, Anton Chekhov, Graham Greene … perhaps Jorge Luis Borges will do as an example - in the poem “The watcher”; “The door to suicide is open, but theologians assert that, in the subsequent shadows of the other kingdom, there will I be, waiting for myself.”
What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?
Two images spring instantly to mind: The book of Revelation in the New Testament and Dante’s Inferno. But Tolkien has many, as well as Herman Neville (Moby Dick) and Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)
Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing?
I simply can’t choose. And I feel that it would be a bit unfair, since I mainly read thrillers and crime fiction. But I will try anyway: Doris Lessing. She writes with confidence and passion.
Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing?
Again there are so many, but my favorite is John Le Carré. I would love to meet him.
How much research is involved in each of your books?
I do a lot of research for all my books, even if I am now writing crime fiction from Svalbard – and I have lived there for seven years. But I do like to be exact and correct in my writing. This is perhaps due to my background as a scientist.
Where’d you get the idea for your main character?
My main character, Knut Fjeld, is a man that will eventually (in book seven of a series of twelve books) become the head of the police force on Svalbard - the Sysselmann. This position is also the same as Governor of the Norwegian high Arctic, directly placed under the Norwegian King.
I am writing about police work and murders most gruesome committed close to the North Pole, in the world’s northernmost communities, occupied mainly by coal miners, scientists, tourists and adventurers.
Do you have a pain from childhood that compels you to write? If not, what does?
There is pain in everyone’s childhood – as well as in mine. But it is the joy and inspirations of childhood that inspires me to write. I loved reading and was encouraged to write my own stories from a very early age - by my parents, teachers and the librarian in the small town I grew up in.
What’s the best idea for marketing a book you can do yourself?
I am appallingly bad at marketing; don’t know the first thing about it. So it would seem that the best I have done so far is to get to know an author named Matt Rees and get myself interviewed on his web site.
What’s your experience with being translated?
Translations into the Scandinavian languages do not count, since they are very similar to Norwegian (except Icelandic). But I have difficulties with my own texts being translated into English. Since I have lived in UK for a total of seven years, I have developed an English persona, and it is very different from the Norwegian one. I would not tell a story the same way in English. What works best is to shut my eyes and let the translator get on with it.
Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could
make a living at it?
I do not live entirely off my writing. I also work as a glaciologist and climate scientist. I find that the two professions go well together. I tend to become restless after a period of writing, and the strict logic of science is refreshing after the exhilaration of creativity.
How many books did you write before you were published?
I was published with my first book, but I had been writing for about thirty years by then (I made my first poem when I was five). However, I must stress that I do not consider resistance from a publisher to be a bad thing. If I had struggled more to get it published, maybe my first book would have been different, perhaps better.
In all, I have written six books, and I am currently working on number seven (a documentary about a mining accident in the Arctic).
What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?
I am in two minds about book tours; I love to get in contact with readers, but get very tired of talking about myself. Nothing very strange has happened to me on book tours, but I have been mistaken for an employee in a book store when I was there to sign my books. I actually liked that, being for once so anonymous.
What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?
I regard creating new ideas as one of my strong sides. I see stories in my surroundings most days. My type of creativity feels like a well of storytelling inside my head. I love to create riddles, make people wonder: “Now how could that have happened? And what happens next?”
In answer to your question: No idea is too weird for me to write about. After all, when I was young, I read a lot of science fiction short stories – and because of the nature of this literature, these stories had to be instantly good to capture skeptical readers immediately.
