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In hellen Sommernächten
Hoch oben im Norden, wo im Sommer das weiße Licht alle Konturen verwischt, ertrinken auf rätselhafte Weise junge Männer. Doch das scheint die wenigen Bewohner der Insel am Polarkreis nicht zu beunruhigen: Mehrdeutiges und Traumhaftes ist ihnen vertraut. Aber hat wirklich die rotgewandete Waldfee Huldra ihre Hand im Spiel, wie es die Sage behauptet? Die junge Liv, die mit ihrer berühmten Mutter am nördlichsten Rand der Insel lebt, glaubt zunächst nicht daran. Bis der alte Kyrre mit seinen Geschichten über die männermordende Huldra und die schöne, mysteriöse Maia ihre Vorstellungskraft beflügeln. Gelingt Liv die Lösung des Rätsels, oder verliert auch sie sich in einer Zwischenwelt aus Fantasie und Realität?
384 pages, Hardcover
First published June 9, 2011
21 people are currently reading
1789 people want to read
About the author
John Burnside
96 books277 followersJohn Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.
[Author photo © Norman McBeath]
[Author photo © Norman McBeath]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
September 21, 2016
4.5. Review will be on my channel soon :)
October 18, 2017
This is a book that I will be thinking about for a long time! I ended up having more questions upon finishing it than I did when I started it, but bloody hell, I loved it! If you enjoy ambiguous endings and unreliable narrators then you need to pick up John Burnside’s A Summer of Drowning.
Set in the achingly beautiful and remote Kvaløya in the Arctic Circle, A Summer of Drowning sees Liv, now in her late twenties, attempt to piece together the mysterious events of her 18th summer on the island where several people drowned or vanished without explanation. But the question remains, how much can we trust Liv’s account? How much does her paranoia affect her recollection of events?
Burnside is also a prolific poet and you can really see that in his writing, especially in his descriptions of nature and art. There some truly beautiful passages. He also has an uncanny knack for self-reflection, especially when it comes to solitary people. Solitude plays a huge role in his work, and I think any person comfortable in their own company will appreciate his writing!
The book is haunting; myth and Norwegian folklore blend with modern-day reality, resulting in a sense of distorted time on this isolated island, where nothing and no one is really as it seems. Beneath the guise of myths and legends, there’s a hint of something darker, something human and predatory simmering beneath the surface... But we can only guess at it, Burnside does not provide any concrete answers. Which I understand will not appeal to many readers, but I personally loved it!
Set in the achingly beautiful and remote Kvaløya in the Arctic Circle, A Summer of Drowning sees Liv, now in her late twenties, attempt to piece together the mysterious events of her 18th summer on the island where several people drowned or vanished without explanation. But the question remains, how much can we trust Liv’s account? How much does her paranoia affect her recollection of events?
Burnside is also a prolific poet and you can really see that in his writing, especially in his descriptions of nature and art. There some truly beautiful passages. He also has an uncanny knack for self-reflection, especially when it comes to solitary people. Solitude plays a huge role in his work, and I think any person comfortable in their own company will appreciate his writing!
The book is haunting; myth and Norwegian folklore blend with modern-day reality, resulting in a sense of distorted time on this isolated island, where nothing and no one is really as it seems. Beneath the guise of myths and legends, there’s a hint of something darker, something human and predatory simmering beneath the surface... But we can only guess at it, Burnside does not provide any concrete answers. Which I understand will not appeal to many readers, but I personally loved it!
February 25, 2017
When asked to list the types of books I generally enjoy, a phrase I've often thrown into the list is 'books about solitary people'. In A Summer of Drowning, I have found perhaps the ultimate book about solitary people. Set on the remote Norwegian island of Kvaløya, it features a cast of characters almost universally defined by their independence and solitude. The story is narrated by Liv, a self-confessed loner with no boyfriend or friends - nor any desire for them; her closest relationship is with Kyrre Opdahl, an ageing neighbour who fills her head with old folk tales about mythical creatures and supernatural powers. Liv has been brought up alone by her artist mother Angelika, who has deliberately chosen the isolation of island life and is famed for her reclusive existence. In the present day of the story, Liv is 28, but the majority of the narrative takes place 10 years previously, and recounts the summer she finished school, an already uncertain time marred by a spate of drownings on the island.
Interwoven with the mystery of the drownings is a traditional tale about the huldra - a troll disguised as a beautiful woman, who spirits men away and leads them to their deaths. Kyrre's obsession with variations on this story slowly begins to taint Liv's perceptions of the events of that summer, and she develops an increasing conviction that a mysterious, apparently homeless classmate, Maia, is not all she seems to be, and is in some way connected to the inexplicable deaths. Liv describes herself as 'one of God's spies', and passes her empty days by observing the actions of neighbours and her mother's acquaintances. When a friendly yet sinister stranger called Martin Crosbie arrives to spend summer on the island and becomes the main subject of Liv's spying, her suspicions spiral out of control, to the point that she begins to lose her grip on the line between fantasy and reality.
A Summer of Drowning is a book in which every character has hidden depths and harbours dark secrets. Liv is a complicated girl, precocious but naive, whose life has been shaped by her adored but somewhat heartless mother - and influenced in a different way by the palpable absence of a father she has never known. Despite lacking her own voice in the book, Angelika herself is a constantly dominant presence, a fact underlined by Liv's frequent references to her as Mother - in contrast to her disparaging dismissal of her father as father, the italics often implying a sarcastic tone. The book is filled with small, carefully crafted, and meaningful details like this. The characters and the relationships between them are, without exception, brilliantly rendered, and there's a constant undertone of suspense and unease which reaches its climax in a subtly terrifying interlude set in England.
Personally, I loved this book, but I can imagine that it won't appeal to everyone; it's rather dreamlike, often slow-moving, and there are times when the events it portrays seem oddly anticlimactic and almost unfinished. I have to admit I was disappointed that the last third of the book didn't recapture the escalating sense of dread conveyed so effectively in the England section, and that aspects such as were never given a satisfying explanation. Because we see everything through Liv's eyes, the story ends on a slightly frustrating note, as tales related by unreliable narrators often do. At the end, I felt I'd had a sublime reading experience yet had been left a little let down by the plot. Nevertheless, due to John Burnside's beautiful, beguiling prose and hugely appealing (to me) themes, this was one of the most inspiring books I've read all year. There is absolutely no doubt that I will be reading more of this author's work.
Interwoven with the mystery of the drownings is a traditional tale about the huldra - a troll disguised as a beautiful woman, who spirits men away and leads them to their deaths. Kyrre's obsession with variations on this story slowly begins to taint Liv's perceptions of the events of that summer, and she develops an increasing conviction that a mysterious, apparently homeless classmate, Maia, is not all she seems to be, and is in some way connected to the inexplicable deaths. Liv describes herself as 'one of God's spies', and passes her empty days by observing the actions of neighbours and her mother's acquaintances. When a friendly yet sinister stranger called Martin Crosbie arrives to spend summer on the island and becomes the main subject of Liv's spying, her suspicions spiral out of control, to the point that she begins to lose her grip on the line between fantasy and reality.
A Summer of Drowning is a book in which every character has hidden depths and harbours dark secrets. Liv is a complicated girl, precocious but naive, whose life has been shaped by her adored but somewhat heartless mother - and influenced in a different way by the palpable absence of a father she has never known. Despite lacking her own voice in the book, Angelika herself is a constantly dominant presence, a fact underlined by Liv's frequent references to her as Mother - in contrast to her disparaging dismissal of her father as father, the italics often implying a sarcastic tone. The book is filled with small, carefully crafted, and meaningful details like this. The characters and the relationships between them are, without exception, brilliantly rendered, and there's a constant undertone of suspense and unease which reaches its climax in a subtly terrifying interlude set in England.
Personally, I loved this book, but I can imagine that it won't appeal to everyone; it's rather dreamlike, often slow-moving, and there are times when the events it portrays seem oddly anticlimactic and almost unfinished. I have to admit I was disappointed that the last third of the book didn't recapture the escalating sense of dread conveyed so effectively in the England section, and that aspects such as were never given a satisfying explanation. Because we see everything through Liv's eyes, the story ends on a slightly frustrating note, as tales related by unreliable narrators often do. At the end, I felt I'd had a sublime reading experience yet had been left a little let down by the plot. Nevertheless, due to John Burnside's beautiful, beguiling prose and hugely appealing (to me) themes, this was one of the most inspiring books I've read all year. There is absolutely no doubt that I will be reading more of this author's work.
June 25, 2019
Ungefähr nach zwei Dritteln fing ich langsam an das Interesse zu verlieren. Bis dahin hat mich die mittsommernächtliche Stimmung auf der Insel und die in der Schwebe gehaltene Erzählung für sich einnehmen können. Irgendwie habe ich erwartet, dass dann noch etwas Entscheidendes passieren würde. Doch die Ich-Erzählerin hatte eigentlich bereits zu Anfang alles Wesentliche vorweg genommen, so dass das Ende eher mau ausfiel. Schade, da hatte ich mir mehr versprochen.
July 2, 2012
I had high hopes for this novel, but was sorely disappointed. It is a suspense novel without any real suspense. It is a novel about myth without any magic. The narrator reveals her perceptions and then immediately gives away the flaws in her perceptions by not so much foreshadowing as forestorytelling, therefore undoing any tension in the narrative. There is a lot of unnecessary repetition, particularly regarding the "deep thoughts" (read "annoying rhetorical questions") of the teenage narrator. The magic that the author tries to conjure in the last 100 pages seems forced because there has been a conscious effort to deny magic through the rest of the book. All in all, I felt really disconnected from the events and characters in this book, and it was a chore to finish it.
February 14, 2012
A Summer of Drowning is John Burnside’s eighth novel. Although it sounded interesting to me, I initially decided to skip it because the previous “Burnside novels” I’d read I was less than taken with. Then I read an article in which Burnside stated that he, himself, was less than thrilled with his own early novels and that he recognized their mistakes. Okay, I decided, maybe it was time I gave John Burnside another chance.
A Summer of Drowning is set on the small Arctic island of Kvaløya, a place of “snow and sullen light” by winter, and “bird calls and wind-sifted murmurs” by summer. It’s narrated in retrospect by Liv, the teenaged daughter of Angelika Rossdale, a celebrated landscape painter from Oslo.
Liv and Angelika live together in a “grey, sunlit house above the meadows,” and Angelika, who is “famously reclusive” and who “didn’t need other people,” rarely emerges from her studio unless it’s for dinner, or Saturday morning coffee, or to garden. Her painting, she says, is her life, and her removal from the world, she insists, is deliberate: “To turn away from the busy world is interesting, up to a point…but to refuse oneself is exemplary. To become nothing, to remove yourself from the frame – that is the highest form of art.” Initially, one believes Angelika, but as the reader gets deeper into the book, he or she has to wonder if Angelika has, indeed, “removed herself from the frame,” or if she’s only paying lip service to this ideal.
Liv, however, who has no choice in being “removed from the frame,” who has no vocation, not much ambition, and on that remote northern island, none of the interests that preoccupy most girls her age. Almost by default, Liv has become a watcher, “one of God’s spies.” “I simply look out,” she says, “over the meadows, over the water, and I pay attention.”
The one person on Kvaløya Liv pays attention to is Kyrre Opdahl, Angelika and Liv’s elderly neighbor. Kyrre lives on the island with his boxes of “beautiful junk” and tells Liv Norse folktales, the “old stories,” one revolving around the huldra, a forest creature who lures both men and boys to their death. When two of her classmates – Mats and Harald Sigfridsson – drown within days of each other – Liv begins to wonder if another classmate, Maia, a “dark-eyed, mocking girl with a loose tomboy walk who had always been an outsider” could be the huldra. Maia was, after all, seen with both boys shortly before they drowned, and both boys drowned on clear, still nights. As Liv puts it, “The meadows were quiet, the sky was clear, and the water was still....There was no reason for any of them to die.”
Another person Liv watches is Englishman Martin Crosbie, “around thirty…sensitive, or delicate…a worried spirit.” Crosbie has rented Kyrre’s boathouse for the entire summer, and to Liv, he’s an odd man, telling little, seemingly insignificant lies and going about always distracted, as if drunk. Liv describes him as “elsewhere, in another world, or another time.” In addition, Crosbie seems to be watching Liv as much as Liv is watching him. Crosbie, as Liv will learn, has his secrets, secrets she was not meant to discover.
It’s not a spoiler to tell you that before this extraordinary summer is over, Kyrre, Maia, and Martin Crosbie will disappear as well. Despite the fact that I said “it’s not a spoiler,” I can hear the groans now. Since Liv is telling the story in retrospect, from vantage point of ten years, the reader learns about the disappearances in the first seven pages. And knowing about them doesn’t spoil the story tension, but adds to it, instead. We begin to feel claustrophobic, trapped on the island just as Liv is trapped. And, like Liv, we begin to sense the impending horror of that summer, the summer when “the light was that still, silvery-white gloaming that makes everything spectral...ghost birds hanging on the air.”
In between observing those around her, Liv, as can be seen from the above, is a keen observer of the natural world. She tells the reader about “a new sweetness of grasses and wildflowers, and mountain water gathering in the meadows” and “pockets of darkness” on garden walls. From its opening pages A Summer of Drowning is a hypnotic book, written in beautiful, hypnotic prose. I wasn’t surprised at that. Burnside is also a talented poet, a Whitbread winner, and his prose as well has been praised for its crystalline clarity and poetic cadence. This is very evident in this lyrically written book. Listen to Liv and she imagines Maia:
Maia floating in the Sound somewhere downshore, and a stolen boat drifting on the tide, miles away, empty, barely moving, on water that, to all appearances, was as still and unbroken as the surface of an empty mirror.
Even those who don’t know much about poetry, and I am certainly no poet myself, though I do love reading poetry, will notice the long vowels and the repeated consonant sounds. The beauty of Burnside’s prose actually adds to the feeling of menace and impending doom present everywhere in this book. This is a book about the shadowland between waking and dreams, between reality and myth, and Burnside’s limpid prose is perfect for showcasing that place of mystery.
Naturally A Summer of Drowning is a very atmospheric book, but what, exactly, that atmosphere might be is difficult to pin down. At times, this is a gorgeous book, filled with all the strange light and wild beauty of the remote North. At other times, it’s sinister, as just about everyone watches everyone else, and everyone, it seems, has something to hide. And, there are dips into the supernatural, but dips only. This isn’t a book “about” the supernatural, and when it comes to that subject, Burnside writes with an extraordinarily light touch. The book is definitely not “gimmickly.” As one reads on, past the first third or so, one comes to realize that this is also a book about delusion and self-delusion, and about the untrustworthiness of believing what we see with our own eyes. Once the reader realizes that the central subject of the book isn’t the mystery of what happened to Mats and Harald and Kyrre and Maia and even Martin Crosbie, but Liv, herself, a note of hysteria, or perhaps paranoia, has crept into the narrative, and the book’s title becomes highly symbolic.
And, about that title. It’s “a” summer of drowning, not “the” summer of drowning. Was there more than one? Is this something that happens with any degree of regularity on Kvaløya? Is there something, something important that Liv is holding back? For Liv, herself tells us that there are “two kinds of seeing.” One is about finding “what we have always been told is there,” while the other is about going “out alone in the world,” like “a boy going out into the fields, or along the shore,” a boy who finds that “something creeps in at the edge of his vision.”
Liv is a well-drawn character, but some readers, I think, will find it difficult to identify with her. She’s not your average girl, or what you might think of as “your average girl.” And she’s not nearly as serious as one might think, with all the disappearing and drowning going on around her. At an art gallery showing, she says, “It was immediately obvious [it] was one of those exhibitions that seek to inform and, at the same time, provoke serious thinking about what art is all about and I couldn’t be bothered with that.”
All of the characters are a bit mysterious, but in this book, that doesn’t equate to “sketchily drawn.” These characters serve this novel best by not revealing everything about themselves, by not letting us get to know them better than they know themselves.
So, did I think the book was perfect? Almost, but not quite. I think it’s weighed down – and a book like this should feel weightless – by a subplot involving Liv’s travel writer father in England, a man she’s never seen. We realize that Liv is finally being given a chance to define herself, to “frame” her own life in a way her mother never offered her. But the subplot, though beautifully written and interesting, at least at first, lacks any emotional payoff, and Liv fails to obtain the answers she seeks.
In the end, A Summer of Drowning might be one of those books that raises more questions than it answers. It is deliberately ambiguous, and this ambiguity is disturbing and haunting. This is a book that grabs hold of a reader and won’t let go weeks, months, maybe years after the last page has been turned. I just loved it.
4.5/5
Recommended: To readers of literary fiction, who don’t require every loose end to be tied up.
Note: I know some readers who believe the cover of this book, while attractive, is far too dark. I agree, and I want to point out that the actual cover is far darker than the photo depicts. The book, itself, is dark, but prospective readers must be able to see the scene depicted on the cover to be enticed to pick the book up and page through it. I hope publishers take Julian Barnes’ words to heart about cover art, and that readers will see a surge in quality cover art in the years to come.
A Summer of Drowning is set on the small Arctic island of Kvaløya, a place of “snow and sullen light” by winter, and “bird calls and wind-sifted murmurs” by summer. It’s narrated in retrospect by Liv, the teenaged daughter of Angelika Rossdale, a celebrated landscape painter from Oslo.
Liv and Angelika live together in a “grey, sunlit house above the meadows,” and Angelika, who is “famously reclusive” and who “didn’t need other people,” rarely emerges from her studio unless it’s for dinner, or Saturday morning coffee, or to garden. Her painting, she says, is her life, and her removal from the world, she insists, is deliberate: “To turn away from the busy world is interesting, up to a point…but to refuse oneself is exemplary. To become nothing, to remove yourself from the frame – that is the highest form of art.” Initially, one believes Angelika, but as the reader gets deeper into the book, he or she has to wonder if Angelika has, indeed, “removed herself from the frame,” or if she’s only paying lip service to this ideal.
Liv, however, who has no choice in being “removed from the frame,” who has no vocation, not much ambition, and on that remote northern island, none of the interests that preoccupy most girls her age. Almost by default, Liv has become a watcher, “one of God’s spies.” “I simply look out,” she says, “over the meadows, over the water, and I pay attention.”
The one person on Kvaløya Liv pays attention to is Kyrre Opdahl, Angelika and Liv’s elderly neighbor. Kyrre lives on the island with his boxes of “beautiful junk” and tells Liv Norse folktales, the “old stories,” one revolving around the huldra, a forest creature who lures both men and boys to their death. When two of her classmates – Mats and Harald Sigfridsson – drown within days of each other – Liv begins to wonder if another classmate, Maia, a “dark-eyed, mocking girl with a loose tomboy walk who had always been an outsider” could be the huldra. Maia was, after all, seen with both boys shortly before they drowned, and both boys drowned on clear, still nights. As Liv puts it, “The meadows were quiet, the sky was clear, and the water was still....There was no reason for any of them to die.”
Another person Liv watches is Englishman Martin Crosbie, “around thirty…sensitive, or delicate…a worried spirit.” Crosbie has rented Kyrre’s boathouse for the entire summer, and to Liv, he’s an odd man, telling little, seemingly insignificant lies and going about always distracted, as if drunk. Liv describes him as “elsewhere, in another world, or another time.” In addition, Crosbie seems to be watching Liv as much as Liv is watching him. Crosbie, as Liv will learn, has his secrets, secrets she was not meant to discover.
It’s not a spoiler to tell you that before this extraordinary summer is over, Kyrre, Maia, and Martin Crosbie will disappear as well. Despite the fact that I said “it’s not a spoiler,” I can hear the groans now. Since Liv is telling the story in retrospect, from vantage point of ten years, the reader learns about the disappearances in the first seven pages. And knowing about them doesn’t spoil the story tension, but adds to it, instead. We begin to feel claustrophobic, trapped on the island just as Liv is trapped. And, like Liv, we begin to sense the impending horror of that summer, the summer when “the light was that still, silvery-white gloaming that makes everything spectral...ghost birds hanging on the air.”
In between observing those around her, Liv, as can be seen from the above, is a keen observer of the natural world. She tells the reader about “a new sweetness of grasses and wildflowers, and mountain water gathering in the meadows” and “pockets of darkness” on garden walls. From its opening pages A Summer of Drowning is a hypnotic book, written in beautiful, hypnotic prose. I wasn’t surprised at that. Burnside is also a talented poet, a Whitbread winner, and his prose as well has been praised for its crystalline clarity and poetic cadence. This is very evident in this lyrically written book. Listen to Liv and she imagines Maia:
Maia floating in the Sound somewhere downshore, and a stolen boat drifting on the tide, miles away, empty, barely moving, on water that, to all appearances, was as still and unbroken as the surface of an empty mirror.
Even those who don’t know much about poetry, and I am certainly no poet myself, though I do love reading poetry, will notice the long vowels and the repeated consonant sounds. The beauty of Burnside’s prose actually adds to the feeling of menace and impending doom present everywhere in this book. This is a book about the shadowland between waking and dreams, between reality and myth, and Burnside’s limpid prose is perfect for showcasing that place of mystery.
Naturally A Summer of Drowning is a very atmospheric book, but what, exactly, that atmosphere might be is difficult to pin down. At times, this is a gorgeous book, filled with all the strange light and wild beauty of the remote North. At other times, it’s sinister, as just about everyone watches everyone else, and everyone, it seems, has something to hide. And, there are dips into the supernatural, but dips only. This isn’t a book “about” the supernatural, and when it comes to that subject, Burnside writes with an extraordinarily light touch. The book is definitely not “gimmickly.” As one reads on, past the first third or so, one comes to realize that this is also a book about delusion and self-delusion, and about the untrustworthiness of believing what we see with our own eyes. Once the reader realizes that the central subject of the book isn’t the mystery of what happened to Mats and Harald and Kyrre and Maia and even Martin Crosbie, but Liv, herself, a note of hysteria, or perhaps paranoia, has crept into the narrative, and the book’s title becomes highly symbolic.
And, about that title. It’s “a” summer of drowning, not “the” summer of drowning. Was there more than one? Is this something that happens with any degree of regularity on Kvaløya? Is there something, something important that Liv is holding back? For Liv, herself tells us that there are “two kinds of seeing.” One is about finding “what we have always been told is there,” while the other is about going “out alone in the world,” like “a boy going out into the fields, or along the shore,” a boy who finds that “something creeps in at the edge of his vision.”
Liv is a well-drawn character, but some readers, I think, will find it difficult to identify with her. She’s not your average girl, or what you might think of as “your average girl.” And she’s not nearly as serious as one might think, with all the disappearing and drowning going on around her. At an art gallery showing, she says, “It was immediately obvious [it] was one of those exhibitions that seek to inform and, at the same time, provoke serious thinking about what art is all about and I couldn’t be bothered with that.”
All of the characters are a bit mysterious, but in this book, that doesn’t equate to “sketchily drawn.” These characters serve this novel best by not revealing everything about themselves, by not letting us get to know them better than they know themselves.
So, did I think the book was perfect? Almost, but not quite. I think it’s weighed down – and a book like this should feel weightless – by a subplot involving Liv’s travel writer father in England, a man she’s never seen. We realize that Liv is finally being given a chance to define herself, to “frame” her own life in a way her mother never offered her. But the subplot, though beautifully written and interesting, at least at first, lacks any emotional payoff, and Liv fails to obtain the answers she seeks.
In the end, A Summer of Drowning might be one of those books that raises more questions than it answers. It is deliberately ambiguous, and this ambiguity is disturbing and haunting. This is a book that grabs hold of a reader and won’t let go weeks, months, maybe years after the last page has been turned. I just loved it.
4.5/5
Recommended: To readers of literary fiction, who don’t require every loose end to be tied up.
Note: I know some readers who believe the cover of this book, while attractive, is far too dark. I agree, and I want to point out that the actual cover is far darker than the photo depicts. The book, itself, is dark, but prospective readers must be able to see the scene depicted on the cover to be enticed to pick the book up and page through it. I hope publishers take Julian Barnes’ words to heart about cover art, and that readers will see a surge in quality cover art in the years to come.
August 22, 2021
A Summer of Drowning is one of those books with no real plots, but then it doesn't really matter since the plot is not the point.
The artist,Angelika Rossdal and her daughter, Liv (the narrator) live solitary lives in Kvaløya, an isolated island in Norway. Liv, now 28 years old, recalls the summer she was 18 when there was a spate of four unexplained disappearances. Their only neighbour and Liv's only friend is a mysterious old man, Kyrre, who beguiles Liv with myths, particularly about the huldra - who seduces young men and leads them to their death.
Reading this felt like dreaming most of the time, in that it's often almost 'structure-less', meanders, is full of images that the prose brings to the mind - these images sometimes visceral in its beauty, sometimes terror inducing in that they make you feel out of control. The author is a poet which is evident in the lyricism of his prose - there are whole paragraphs that I have highlighted. It also transports you to a world of imagination and silence - you think of the spaces between silences and what exists apart from the bustle of everyday life. Through a beautifully illustrative description of the landscape (which is also like a character in the novel), the author evokes questions about the mysteries of the natural world away from modern living, and about how despite advances in technology, man doesn't really see beyond the obvious and cannot unravel or even see the mythical and mystical since he has lost the ability to do so.
I have always loved books about quiet lives and this is a book for those who love their alone time and a vast space not filled with people. Liv is definitely my kindred spirit in her desire to break away from the norms that define societal structures, and from the ordinary and the everyday.
The landscape, at times achingly beautiful, starts to seem menacing when Liv starts to 'see' and believe Kyrre about the huldra having been responsible for the disappearances. The 'real world' becomes less real than the myths that start to come to life. I am not a big fan of magical realism, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself drawn to the mystical in the book. It's as if the reader, like Liv, becomes a part of the elaborate delusion that becomes reality.
There is no solution to the mysteries and that is okay - it suits the dreamlike, unresolved style of the book. I was only disappointed with the last bit of the book. I thought it was too long drawn out than it was necessary and the charm started to wear off - I felt a bit more skeptical and less mesmerized than I was with the rest of the book.
Overall, this is recommended for those with a lot of patience, which will be rewarded if you enjoy beautiful sentences.
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Literarianism
The artist,Angelika Rossdal and her daughter, Liv (the narrator) live solitary lives in Kvaløya, an isolated island in Norway. Liv, now 28 years old, recalls the summer she was 18 when there was a spate of four unexplained disappearances. Their only neighbour and Liv's only friend is a mysterious old man, Kyrre, who beguiles Liv with myths, particularly about the huldra - who seduces young men and leads them to their death.
Reading this felt like dreaming most of the time, in that it's often almost 'structure-less', meanders, is full of images that the prose brings to the mind - these images sometimes visceral in its beauty, sometimes terror inducing in that they make you feel out of control. The author is a poet which is evident in the lyricism of his prose - there are whole paragraphs that I have highlighted. It also transports you to a world of imagination and silence - you think of the spaces between silences and what exists apart from the bustle of everyday life. Through a beautifully illustrative description of the landscape (which is also like a character in the novel), the author evokes questions about the mysteries of the natural world away from modern living, and about how despite advances in technology, man doesn't really see beyond the obvious and cannot unravel or even see the mythical and mystical since he has lost the ability to do so.
I have always loved books about quiet lives and this is a book for those who love their alone time and a vast space not filled with people. Liv is definitely my kindred spirit in her desire to break away from the norms that define societal structures, and from the ordinary and the everyday.
The landscape, at times achingly beautiful, starts to seem menacing when Liv starts to 'see' and believe Kyrre about the huldra having been responsible for the disappearances. The 'real world' becomes less real than the myths that start to come to life. I am not a big fan of magical realism, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself drawn to the mystical in the book. It's as if the reader, like Liv, becomes a part of the elaborate delusion that becomes reality.
There is no solution to the mysteries and that is okay - it suits the dreamlike, unresolved style of the book. I was only disappointed with the last bit of the book. I thought it was too long drawn out than it was necessary and the charm started to wear off - I felt a bit more skeptical and less mesmerized than I was with the rest of the book.
Overall, this is recommended for those with a lot of patience, which will be rewarded if you enjoy beautiful sentences.
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Literarianism
May 20, 2013
The narrative voice of this novel is basically this:
At the time this seemed impossible. But what it impossible? Looking back now, I know that it couldn't have happened. But it did happen. And after everything that happened after, I see now that it was possible. But how could that have been? I knew that it was impossible, yet it had happened. It seemed strange, then, and perhaps even stranger now, but so many strange things happened that summer, that a part of me will always be unsure if they really happened. How could they have happened?
To start with, I found this sort of pleasantly hypnotic, but by the second half of the book it got so irritating as to start causing actual stress.
A Summer of Drowning has some nice language, too, and a couple of genuinely unsettling moments. But it's also *seriously* slow, and there's a sucking void at the centre which is the narrator--a twenty-eight year old woman, recounting her experiences as an eighteen year old, who has absolutely no personality whatsoever, whose voice is exactly that of a male middle-aged writer of poetry and literary fiction. I quietly hoped for her to meet a sudden violent end and for the narration to have been taken over by, say, one of the brothers who drown at the beginning of the novel and have no further impact on anything. Really, anybody but her. She's a total blank, an absence--and perhaps there's something rather haunting about this in itself, but it also made the novel, for me, very cold.
It's a strange book, and I do like strange, and I'm all for Arctic islands and folk tales: but it's been a long time since I've read anything I found so frustratingly repetitive and weirdly detached.
November 29, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2015
Wie in den beiden Romanen von BurnsideDie Spur des Teufels: Roman, Haus der Stummen, die ich bereits gelesen habe, steht im Zentrum ein absoluter Einzelgänger, der – in diesem Fall die – ihr gesamtes Leben im Haus der Eltern verbringt.
Die 18-jährige Liv beschreibt ihr Leben im nördlichen Norwegen, in einem abgelegenen Haus, wo sie mit ihrer Mutter lebt, die sich ganz ihrer Malerei widmet. Als zwei Jungen ertrinken, scheint sich dies nicht nur mit der ganz eigenen Stimmung der langen Sommernächte, in denen Menschen schlecht schlafen und zu Halluzinationen neigen, zu verbinden, sondern auch mit allen Märchen und Sagen zu korrespondieren, die der alte Freund des Mädchens ihr erzählt. Ganz eigen ist die Beschreibung der Zeitlosigkeit, des Gefühls für die Dinge, die unausgesprochen in der Luft liegen, und die seltene Fähigkeit, nichts zu tun – außer die karge Umwelt auf sich einwirken zu lassen. Zudem spielen Malerei und Literatur eine entscheidende Rolle – bedeutende norwegische Maler (Munch kannte ich, der Name Sohlberg ist mir hier das erste Mal begegnet) werden genauso diskutiert wie Dramen Ibsens genannt werden oder die Sage von Narziss eine Rolle spielt. Ungewöhnlich auch die Verteidigung des Alleinseins und der Verweigerung ständig zu kommunizieren, so sagt die Hauptfigur, ungewöhnlich genug für eine 18Jährige, sie möge keine Briefe und Telefonate. Auch die Nähe anderer Menschen ist ihr unangenehm. Sie führt weiter aus: „Verschlungen mag ich nicht. Ich mag’s unberührt. Es gibt zu viel Berührung auf der Welt. Zu viel Verschlungenheit. Vielleicht stimmt es ja, dass wir alle aufeinander angewiesen sind, dass alles in der Welt auf alles angewiesen ist – doch sind wir ebenso auf die Zwischenräume angewiesen. Wir brauchen diese Freiräume, denn im Raum liegt die Ordnung. Deshalb mag ich Landkarten; sie erkennen die Lücken zwischen den Dingen an und erheben stummen Protest gegen jene, die glauben, allein Verbindungen seien wichtig, gegen Menschen, die sich an andere wenden, nur um sie zu berühren, selbst wenn sie gar nicht berührt werden wollen, gegen Menschen, die unerwartete Briefe an völlig Fremde schreiben, nur weil sie glauben, das werde von ihnen erwartet.“(S. 79) So hat auch ihre Vorstellung von Glück wenig mit anderen zu tun: „Glück ist ein Geheimnis, es ist still, persönlich und jenseits aller Worte. Man kann es nicht beschreiben, und entgegen allen anders lautenden Behauptungen kann es auch nicht geteilt werden. Sieht man zwei Menschen, die zusammen glücklich sind, weiß man, dass jeder für sich das Glück mitgebracht hat – sie haben es nicht gemeinsam gefunden, denn wie Frieden oder den Heiligen Geist kann man Glück nur finden, wenn man allein ist.“ (S. 318)
Am Ende werden Fragen, die sich der Leser stellt, oft nicht beantwortet, auch weil es oft nicht die Fragen sind, die sich Liv stellt. Fazit: Ein wunderbarer Roman, mit tollen Bildern, auch darüber, dass Geschichten (und Bilder) oft die einzige Möglichkeit sind das Unfassbare, Unerklärbare auszudrücken. Und aus meiner Sicht auch ein Roman, der die die in unserer Gesellschaft stets erwartete Geselligkeit und Kommunikation in Frage stellt und ihnen eine Form selbstgewählter Einsamkeit gegenüberstellt.
Die 18-jährige Liv beschreibt ihr Leben im nördlichen Norwegen, in einem abgelegenen Haus, wo sie mit ihrer Mutter lebt, die sich ganz ihrer Malerei widmet. Als zwei Jungen ertrinken, scheint sich dies nicht nur mit der ganz eigenen Stimmung der langen Sommernächte, in denen Menschen schlecht schlafen und zu Halluzinationen neigen, zu verbinden, sondern auch mit allen Märchen und Sagen zu korrespondieren, die der alte Freund des Mädchens ihr erzählt. Ganz eigen ist die Beschreibung der Zeitlosigkeit, des Gefühls für die Dinge, die unausgesprochen in der Luft liegen, und die seltene Fähigkeit, nichts zu tun – außer die karge Umwelt auf sich einwirken zu lassen. Zudem spielen Malerei und Literatur eine entscheidende Rolle – bedeutende norwegische Maler (Munch kannte ich, der Name Sohlberg ist mir hier das erste Mal begegnet) werden genauso diskutiert wie Dramen Ibsens genannt werden oder die Sage von Narziss eine Rolle spielt. Ungewöhnlich auch die Verteidigung des Alleinseins und der Verweigerung ständig zu kommunizieren, so sagt die Hauptfigur, ungewöhnlich genug für eine 18Jährige, sie möge keine Briefe und Telefonate. Auch die Nähe anderer Menschen ist ihr unangenehm. Sie führt weiter aus: „Verschlungen mag ich nicht. Ich mag’s unberührt. Es gibt zu viel Berührung auf der Welt. Zu viel Verschlungenheit. Vielleicht stimmt es ja, dass wir alle aufeinander angewiesen sind, dass alles in der Welt auf alles angewiesen ist – doch sind wir ebenso auf die Zwischenräume angewiesen. Wir brauchen diese Freiräume, denn im Raum liegt die Ordnung. Deshalb mag ich Landkarten; sie erkennen die Lücken zwischen den Dingen an und erheben stummen Protest gegen jene, die glauben, allein Verbindungen seien wichtig, gegen Menschen, die sich an andere wenden, nur um sie zu berühren, selbst wenn sie gar nicht berührt werden wollen, gegen Menschen, die unerwartete Briefe an völlig Fremde schreiben, nur weil sie glauben, das werde von ihnen erwartet.“(S. 79) So hat auch ihre Vorstellung von Glück wenig mit anderen zu tun: „Glück ist ein Geheimnis, es ist still, persönlich und jenseits aller Worte. Man kann es nicht beschreiben, und entgegen allen anders lautenden Behauptungen kann es auch nicht geteilt werden. Sieht man zwei Menschen, die zusammen glücklich sind, weiß man, dass jeder für sich das Glück mitgebracht hat – sie haben es nicht gemeinsam gefunden, denn wie Frieden oder den Heiligen Geist kann man Glück nur finden, wenn man allein ist.“ (S. 318)
Am Ende werden Fragen, die sich der Leser stellt, oft nicht beantwortet, auch weil es oft nicht die Fragen sind, die sich Liv stellt. Fazit: Ein wunderbarer Roman, mit tollen Bildern, auch darüber, dass Geschichten (und Bilder) oft die einzige Möglichkeit sind das Unfassbare, Unerklärbare auszudrücken. Und aus meiner Sicht auch ein Roman, der die die in unserer Gesellschaft stets erwartete Geselligkeit und Kommunikation in Frage stellt und ihnen eine Form selbstgewählter Einsamkeit gegenüberstellt.
February 21, 2019
My first John Burnside book. He is an extremely talented writer and write novels, poems and memoirs. This book had an interesting story and some beautifully crafted poetic sentences. It was a little repetitive in places but I think this effect mirrored the way memory works, going over and over an incident or event. The effect it had on this reader is not really knowing what happened and what was memory and creative memory. The book is about the power of stories and storytelling and myth and folklore and how these can inform a troubled mind. The last couple of pages are beautiful and packed with truth. Here is an example, 'I just need to know where everything is, and then, when I am sure, to make a little space for the mystery.'
There are several ideas in this novel merit discussion. Perhaps as the light falls, with a dram in hand and the company of a few good friends.
There are several ideas in this novel merit discussion. Perhaps as the light falls, with a dram in hand and the company of a few good friends.
October 24, 2020
I expected this novel to be either some kind of mystery thriller or a fantastic tale with mythical creatures or at least a huge dose of magical realism.
What I got instead was an overdose of meticulous descriptions of landscape and light at the polar circle in beautiful and overwhelming prose. Unfortunately I don’t care much for that.
Thy mystic touch many reviewers found here remained hidden for me. What I saw were the confused thoughts and imaginations of an overly lonely and mentally not very stable teenage girl.
Overall not my cup of tea.
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Die 17-jährige Liv lebt mit ihrer Mutter, einer Malerin, in einem kleinem Ort am Polarkreis. Die Geschichte beginnt damit, dass in jenem Sommer kurz hintereinander zwei Schulkameraden von Liv unter ungeklärten Umständen ertrinken.
Das könnte ein guter Anfang für entweder einen Krimi oder eine msytisch-magische Geschichte sein, in der Wesen der nordischen Mythologie vorkommen. Genau diese Idee wird dem Leser auch durch den Klappentext und journalistische Lobpreisungen vermittelt. Es handelt sich jedoch um nichts dergleichen, sondern aus meiner Sicht um das Psychogramm einer Halbwüchsigen, die selbst für einen Teenager überdurchschnittlich verwirrt und einsam ist. Man kann als Leser durchaus Zweifel an der psychischen Gesundheit der Protagonistin entwickeln.
10 Jahre nach diesen Vorfällen erzählt Liv die Geschichte eigentlich im Rückblick, benutzt aber fast durchweg die Ich-Perspektive ihres jüngeren Ich. Ich fand die Gedankengänge und Verhaltensweisen für eine 17-jährige allerdings sehr weit hergeholt und nicht glaubwürdig.
Es entwickelt sich kaum Spannung, da die Erzählerin entscheidende Wendungen grundsätzlich vorweg nimmt. Aufregendere Szene werden so verstörend und fiebrig verwirrt beschrieben, dass eine psychische Störung näher liegt als die Existenz von Sagengestalten.
Die Sprache ist natürlich sehr schön und bildgewaltig, der Autor ist schließlich Dichter. Deshalb besteht der Roman wohl größtenteils aus Landschafts- und Lichtbeschreibungen.
Meine Erwartungen hinsichtlich des Romans sind also einerseits in Leere gelaufen. Andererseits kopnnte die schöne Sprache dies nicht kompensieren, da es einfach zuviel des Guten an Beschreibungen war (zumindest für meinen Geschmack).
What I got instead was an overdose of meticulous descriptions of landscape and light at the polar circle in beautiful and overwhelming prose. Unfortunately I don’t care much for that.
Thy mystic touch many reviewers found here remained hidden for me. What I saw were the confused thoughts and imaginations of an overly lonely and mentally not very stable teenage girl.
Overall not my cup of tea.
------------------------------------------------------
Die 17-jährige Liv lebt mit ihrer Mutter, einer Malerin, in einem kleinem Ort am Polarkreis. Die Geschichte beginnt damit, dass in jenem Sommer kurz hintereinander zwei Schulkameraden von Liv unter ungeklärten Umständen ertrinken.
Das könnte ein guter Anfang für entweder einen Krimi oder eine msytisch-magische Geschichte sein, in der Wesen der nordischen Mythologie vorkommen. Genau diese Idee wird dem Leser auch durch den Klappentext und journalistische Lobpreisungen vermittelt. Es handelt sich jedoch um nichts dergleichen, sondern aus meiner Sicht um das Psychogramm einer Halbwüchsigen, die selbst für einen Teenager überdurchschnittlich verwirrt und einsam ist. Man kann als Leser durchaus Zweifel an der psychischen Gesundheit der Protagonistin entwickeln.
10 Jahre nach diesen Vorfällen erzählt Liv die Geschichte eigentlich im Rückblick, benutzt aber fast durchweg die Ich-Perspektive ihres jüngeren Ich. Ich fand die Gedankengänge und Verhaltensweisen für eine 17-jährige allerdings sehr weit hergeholt und nicht glaubwürdig.
Es entwickelt sich kaum Spannung, da die Erzählerin entscheidende Wendungen grundsätzlich vorweg nimmt. Aufregendere Szene werden so verstörend und fiebrig verwirrt beschrieben, dass eine psychische Störung näher liegt als die Existenz von Sagengestalten.
Die Sprache ist natürlich sehr schön und bildgewaltig, der Autor ist schließlich Dichter. Deshalb besteht der Roman wohl größtenteils aus Landschafts- und Lichtbeschreibungen.
Meine Erwartungen hinsichtlich des Romans sind also einerseits in Leere gelaufen. Andererseits kopnnte die schöne Sprache dies nicht kompensieren, da es einfach zuviel des Guten an Beschreibungen war (zumindest für meinen Geschmack).
March 29, 2020
Das Buch war so gar nicht mein Fall. Es fing sehr vielversprechend an, mit vielen mysteriösen Andeutungen. Irgendwann wurden mir diese Andeutungen aber zu viel und zu wenig Aufklärung. Burnside's Schreibstil mag zwar sehr ausgefeilt sein, für mich war es jedoch nichts. Für meinen Geschmack viel zu ätherisch, als hätte der Autor vollkommen den Boden unter den Füßen verloren. Die Beschreibungen haben für mich oft keinen Sinn ergeben und wirkten abgehoben.
Da ich aus einigen Rezensionen entnehmen konnte, dass es hier keine Auflösung oder Erklärung am Ende gibt und das Mysteriöse eher im Nichts verpufft, habe ich bei ca. 60% abgebrochen.
Ähnlich wie bei "Das Schneemädchen" von Eowyn Ivy bin ich hier von einer realistischen Geschichte ausgegangen und kam mit diesem "Zwischending" nicht zurecht. Im Gegensatz zu Ivy deren Sprache mir gut gefallen hat, konnte mich Burnsides Stil nicht begeistern.
Da ich aus einigen Rezensionen entnehmen konnte, dass es hier keine Auflösung oder Erklärung am Ende gibt und das Mysteriöse eher im Nichts verpufft, habe ich bei ca. 60% abgebrochen.
Ähnlich wie bei "Das Schneemädchen" von Eowyn Ivy bin ich hier von einer realistischen Geschichte ausgegangen und kam mit diesem "Zwischending" nicht zurecht. Im Gegensatz zu Ivy deren Sprache mir gut gefallen hat, konnte mich Burnsides Stil nicht begeistern.
January 4, 2012
It is summer time on the island of Kvaloya, the time of the midnight sun. And Mats Sigfridsson has just drowned. Soon after his brother Harald also drowns. How could they both have drowned on such a calm, peaceful sea? And why had they both chosen to steal the same boat. Was it some sort of a suicide pact between the brothers? Liv Rossdal isn’t so sure. And after ten years thinking about the drownings she still isn’t sure.
Liv was eighteen that summer. Finished school and trying to decide what to do with her life. She had lived on the island inside the Arctic circle for as long as she could remember, her father had never been in her life, her mother had made the decision to relocate to focus on painting. They live an isolated existence, although her mother isn’t as much of a recluse as she and the art world sometimes make out. She has her weekly meetings with her “suitors”, and then there is the neighbour Kyrre Opdahl. A strange old man with her stories and tales of huldra and spirits and people who go out one day and are never seen again.
This is one of those books that I really have no idea how to review. Because to give away too many details is to spoil it. And yet the plot isn’t the important thing. It is the writing and the way Burnside tells the story. Liv is our narrator. From a distance of ten years she looks back at that “summer of drowning” and tells us what she saw, and did, and witnessed. What she thought about what had happened. So we have that delicious sense of foreboding all the time. We know from very early on that there will be drownings and mysterious disappearances. And the possibility of a huldra.
The huldra is a wild spirit that appears as a beautiful woman, she lures men to their death.
But the huldra does not exist surely. It is a creature from folklore and legend. But then what possible explanation could there be for the events of that summer in 2001? Before you start to get the wrong impression, this is not a fantasy romance with a new supernatural being at its centre, instead it is a strange dreamlike novel that you are much more likely to find in the literary fiction part of you bookstore than the YA.
The thing about this book that really stood out as I read it was the use of language. It really is a lovely book to just read and enjoy. I found myself noting down quotes almost constantly because both the way Burnside writes, and what he writes about really resonated with me. I loved the character of Liv. I don’t think she would be an altogether pleasant person to know, but I could totally understand and relate to her. Maybe not so much to her mother, although I did like the relationship between the two of them.
And I loved the whole atmosphere of the book, the cover image that I have here in this blog is a lot brighter and clearer than the hard copy one. Which is a pity, because the painting and artist are mentioned in the book, and are important, so it would have been nice to have been able to appreciate it more from the outset. But with the interwebs I was more than able to look the painter & artist up. There was quite a lot in this book that I looked up actually. From Norwegian phrases to artists and paintings, so I guess you could also call it an educational book.
One word of warning though, don’t start this expecting a cut and dried story with a neatly tied up plot, because that isn’t what you are going to get here, instead you’ll get a wonderfully written, atmospheric, and evocative novel. I’ll certainly be investigating more of Burnside’s work, I may even try some of his poetry, we’ll see how that goes though :)
Liv was eighteen that summer. Finished school and trying to decide what to do with her life. She had lived on the island inside the Arctic circle for as long as she could remember, her father had never been in her life, her mother had made the decision to relocate to focus on painting. They live an isolated existence, although her mother isn’t as much of a recluse as she and the art world sometimes make out. She has her weekly meetings with her “suitors”, and then there is the neighbour Kyrre Opdahl. A strange old man with her stories and tales of huldra and spirits and people who go out one day and are never seen again.
This is one of those books that I really have no idea how to review. Because to give away too many details is to spoil it. And yet the plot isn’t the important thing. It is the writing and the way Burnside tells the story. Liv is our narrator. From a distance of ten years she looks back at that “summer of drowning” and tells us what she saw, and did, and witnessed. What she thought about what had happened. So we have that delicious sense of foreboding all the time. We know from very early on that there will be drownings and mysterious disappearances. And the possibility of a huldra.
The huldra is a wild spirit that appears as a beautiful woman, she lures men to their death.
But the huldra does not exist surely. It is a creature from folklore and legend. But then what possible explanation could there be for the events of that summer in 2001? Before you start to get the wrong impression, this is not a fantasy romance with a new supernatural being at its centre, instead it is a strange dreamlike novel that you are much more likely to find in the literary fiction part of you bookstore than the YA.
The thing about this book that really stood out as I read it was the use of language. It really is a lovely book to just read and enjoy. I found myself noting down quotes almost constantly because both the way Burnside writes, and what he writes about really resonated with me. I loved the character of Liv. I don’t think she would be an altogether pleasant person to know, but I could totally understand and relate to her. Maybe not so much to her mother, although I did like the relationship between the two of them.
And I loved the whole atmosphere of the book, the cover image that I have here in this blog is a lot brighter and clearer than the hard copy one. Which is a pity, because the painting and artist are mentioned in the book, and are important, so it would have been nice to have been able to appreciate it more from the outset. But with the interwebs I was more than able to look the painter & artist up. There was quite a lot in this book that I looked up actually. From Norwegian phrases to artists and paintings, so I guess you could also call it an educational book.
One word of warning though, don’t start this expecting a cut and dried story with a neatly tied up plot, because that isn’t what you are going to get here, instead you’ll get a wonderfully written, atmospheric, and evocative novel. I’ll certainly be investigating more of Burnside’s work, I may even try some of his poetry, we’ll see how that goes though :)
November 13, 2013
Why do poets think that writing novels has to be hard work? Shakes head....
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
August 18, 2025
This would have made a fine short story or novella, but as a novel it is repetitive, vague, and unstable. The novel is built around crisis that become anti-climaxes. At times, it is so psychologically vapid and ponderous that it makes Henry James look like a speed writer. The conclusion is dynamic...if a reader gets that far.
July 21, 2020
Õnnetunne on saladus: see on vaikne ja isiklik ja sellest ei räägita. Sellest ei tohi rääkida, ja mida ka ei öeldaks, ei saa seda tegelikult jagada. Kui näete koos kaht inimest, kes on õnnelikud, siis teadke, et kumbki neist tõi selle õnnetunde endaga kaasa - nad ei leidnud seda koos, sest õnn, nagu rahu või Püha Vaim, on miski, mida saab leida ainult üksi olles.
lk 253
lk 253
January 12, 2018
Well, this was one of the most boring books I ever read. I get that writing about solitary people can be interesting, but this book didn’t manage to amaze me.
Let me give you a short summery of the story:
I’m a little disappointed because this story sounded so promising and I all through the book I kept thinking, ‘Something must happen soon, right?’. But guess what? Exactly! Nothing happened!! Even the parts of the plot which should have been exciting (like the boys drowning) were told so nonchalantly that really I wasn’t impressed.
Let me give you a short summery of the story:
I’m a little disappointed because this story sounded so promising and I all through the book I kept thinking, ‘Something must happen soon, right?’. But guess what? Exactly! Nothing happened!! Even the parts of the plot which should have been exciting (like the boys drowning) were told so nonchalantly that really I wasn’t impressed.
May 8, 2012
Apparently this is meant to be eerie but I found it full of waffle, from the unreliable narrator. This is the big question: if the narrator is weak, confused, losing it, addled by white nights, and not a writer, can the dull, repetitive, banal narration be excused? I don't think so.
Here's an example:
I wanted everything to stay the same. No letters, no journalists, no drowned boys, no future. No future, only the present and whatever past I chose to remember. Because remembering is a choice, if it's done well, and nobody can make you remember what you choose to put out of your mind.
For a book about storytelling, it's rather bad at it. The premise is good but it just doesn't deliver.
Here's an example:
I wanted everything to stay the same. No letters, no journalists, no drowned boys, no future. No future, only the present and whatever past I chose to remember. Because remembering is a choice, if it's done well, and nobody can make you remember what you choose to put out of your mind.
For a book about storytelling, it's rather bad at it. The premise is good but it just doesn't deliver.
August 8, 2013
An immediate personal favourite. More than a flicker of Machen, echoes of Salinger's CATCHER', though with a more precocious character, a possible homage to Tove Jansson, and much that reminded me of Joan Lindsay's PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK.
I've not yet read a Burnside novel that didn't both spellbind and quietly horrify me. But this is my favourite of those I have read; I even prefer this to GLISTER, which is saying something. Be prepared for considered (and rewarding) insights into consciousness, as well as unusual characters that are studied in forensic detail.
Would suit a Wheatley, Haneka or von Trier adaptation. There is much to be learnt about enigma and restraint from this Scottish poet and literary novelist and great rewards await a patient reader.
I've not yet read a Burnside novel that didn't both spellbind and quietly horrify me. But this is my favourite of those I have read; I even prefer this to GLISTER, which is saying something. Be prepared for considered (and rewarding) insights into consciousness, as well as unusual characters that are studied in forensic detail.
Would suit a Wheatley, Haneka or von Trier adaptation. There is much to be learnt about enigma and restraint from this Scottish poet and literary novelist and great rewards await a patient reader.
April 19, 2015
I wish writers would get over trying to be elusive or allusive. So much of that mebbes-aye-mebbes-naw stuff is more irritating than clever. Pages of what I can only call faff. Maybe a short story that was strung out into a novel?
I couldn't get a grip on this narrator. She floated about with no personality and no purpose, as if a list of unanswered questions adds up to a character. An interesting strand re her father ended up petering out to nothing at all.
That said, there were some stunning descriptions of the landscape and the light - here is where the sparseness worked. Atmosphere is wonderful.
And the central story was good, overall. Dark and unsettling, and in one small vivid scene, quite disturbing. The ending was enough to spook me.
I couldn't get a grip on this narrator. She floated about with no personality and no purpose, as if a list of unanswered questions adds up to a character. An interesting strand re her father ended up petering out to nothing at all.
That said, there were some stunning descriptions of the landscape and the light - here is where the sparseness worked. Atmosphere is wonderful.
And the central story was good, overall. Dark and unsettling, and in one small vivid scene, quite disturbing. The ending was enough to spook me.
July 26, 2024
Ein sehr gut geschriebener Roman. Burnside ist einer der wenigen Autoren, die spannende Plots (Mystery) auf hohem sprachlichen Level zustande bringen. Ich glaube diesen Roman würde ich zuerst wieder anfassen, um ihn nochmal zu lesen, denn das wäre gut möglich, schon allein aufgrund seiner Sprache.
February 11, 2019
Loved this book despite its slightly exasperating flaws (going 'round in circles over and over, constant foreshadowing etc.). The atmosphere and the magnetic writing were hard to resist, and I adored the slow pace, the careful introspection, the haunting & otherworldly story.
June 23, 2017
Lets try a review this way:
For those who dream of a dangerous, adventurous life, yet whom remain indoors deep within the dusty pages of inked characters on a crisp, white page;
Three days ago, do you remember that hearing that pretty and prim group of poppy-seed posse calling you a recluse because you chose an evening of trolls and faery tales;
A desolate Friday night entering the ancient myth of the huldra, lets call her Maia, who is somehow attached to the the drowning of two sibling boys? the inexplicable disappearance of the perverted Martin Crosbie ? and how about the animalistic screams that pierce the air, signaling the vanishing of Kyrre Opdahl and thus the end of summer on a remote island lost somewhere in the depths of the Arctic Circle?
Most of you recluses answer, « No babbler, it was not a myth. These moonlit and supernaturally dark tales were and must still be true! »;
And here is where the adults whose shadow dismisses fantasy and fictive worlds laughs and huffs at the idea of an evil troll’s capability to mask her repulsive spirit with beauty; a way to lure the chosen ones to their death.
Eighteen-year-old Liv will not mock nor dispute such doomed imaginations.
Now twenty-eight, she is here to tell us these tales have come to life in what she calls, The Summer of Drowning;
A narrative about a young girl and her desolate mother, the famous painter Angelika Rossdal whose lives appear calm, transfixed, and structurally ideal until one Summer, filled with lit midnights, and dark noons; an isolated world where suitors arrive promptly for Saturday tea and deathly hollow stories of trolls, improbably deaths, swimming mermaids and dangerous women are ritualistically told throughout childhood, into adolescence by eternally old men;
A narrative whose 328 pages breaks from reality and never truly brings the solitaires back, not really;
A narrative about dreamt white nights, illusory atmospheres of horror, eyes that tell lies and fantasies that speak truth;
A universe where loners exist and friends and company are welcomed as wicked enemies and cameras and binoculars seek out foreign predators;
A story within many stories, tainting and unifying perceptions of a white, dark, gripping series of hours;
A mysterious background story of an absent fathers whose one appearance in a narrative only exists as a means of presenting his subtle death and exemplifying Liv’s heartless and sarcastic treatment of the term, idea, meaning « father »;
A cryptically crafted story that traverses a multitude of spaces throughout England and the Arctic islands, gradually climaxing into a terrifyingly suspenseful and hallucinatory atmosphere;
A series of unreliable focalizers;
A series of climactic and yet anticlimactic events;
An eternal, yet seemingly ephemeral series of sublime descriptions;
An inspiring, yet inexplicably terrifyingly affective tone penetrating into the solitaires blood as a stories suspense escalates to interweave a series of unreliable focalizers, contradictory events, and contradictory descriptions;
A narrative;
A story;
A prose;
An author’s imagination;
This post is for the solitaires;
for the recluses;
Enter a fantastical cosmos about beguiling misfortunes and unlikely plots;
Realize the power of beautiful imagination and beautiful written language.
The possibility of truth within childhood tales.
The possibility, no the brilliance of A Summer of Drowning.
In a world of rationality, and evidence, and congruent truth, escape the jabber of the world into your desolate mind. Opt for the illogical, the improbable, the illusory hallucination, The cosmos of fiction and the world of the written. Of a place hidden in the cold woods and wet meadows where, one summer, the huldra stood and watched two boys drown, one foreigner disappear, and an old man vanish, but not die.
Escape reality, and live your solitary life amongst your books and remember, those who read, have seen more, experienced more, felt more on the inside than those who live on the outside.
Yours Truly,
Delphine, the Babbler
For those who dream of a dangerous, adventurous life, yet whom remain indoors deep within the dusty pages of inked characters on a crisp, white page;
Three days ago, do you remember that hearing that pretty and prim group of poppy-seed posse calling you a recluse because you chose an evening of trolls and faery tales;
A desolate Friday night entering the ancient myth of the huldra, lets call her Maia, who is somehow attached to the the drowning of two sibling boys? the inexplicable disappearance of the perverted Martin Crosbie ? and how about the animalistic screams that pierce the air, signaling the vanishing of Kyrre Opdahl and thus the end of summer on a remote island lost somewhere in the depths of the Arctic Circle?
Most of you recluses answer, « No babbler, it was not a myth. These moonlit and supernaturally dark tales were and must still be true! »;
And here is where the adults whose shadow dismisses fantasy and fictive worlds laughs and huffs at the idea of an evil troll’s capability to mask her repulsive spirit with beauty; a way to lure the chosen ones to their death.
Eighteen-year-old Liv will not mock nor dispute such doomed imaginations.
Now twenty-eight, she is here to tell us these tales have come to life in what she calls, The Summer of Drowning;
A narrative about a young girl and her desolate mother, the famous painter Angelika Rossdal whose lives appear calm, transfixed, and structurally ideal until one Summer, filled with lit midnights, and dark noons; an isolated world where suitors arrive promptly for Saturday tea and deathly hollow stories of trolls, improbably deaths, swimming mermaids and dangerous women are ritualistically told throughout childhood, into adolescence by eternally old men;
A narrative whose 328 pages breaks from reality and never truly brings the solitaires back, not really;
A narrative about dreamt white nights, illusory atmospheres of horror, eyes that tell lies and fantasies that speak truth;
A universe where loners exist and friends and company are welcomed as wicked enemies and cameras and binoculars seek out foreign predators;
A story within many stories, tainting and unifying perceptions of a white, dark, gripping series of hours;
A mysterious background story of an absent fathers whose one appearance in a narrative only exists as a means of presenting his subtle death and exemplifying Liv’s heartless and sarcastic treatment of the term, idea, meaning « father »;
A cryptically crafted story that traverses a multitude of spaces throughout England and the Arctic islands, gradually climaxing into a terrifyingly suspenseful and hallucinatory atmosphere;
A series of unreliable focalizers;
A series of climactic and yet anticlimactic events;
An eternal, yet seemingly ephemeral series of sublime descriptions;
An inspiring, yet inexplicably terrifyingly affective tone penetrating into the solitaires blood as a stories suspense escalates to interweave a series of unreliable focalizers, contradictory events, and contradictory descriptions;
A narrative;
A story;
A prose;
An author’s imagination;
This post is for the solitaires;
for the recluses;
Enter a fantastical cosmos about beguiling misfortunes and unlikely plots;
Realize the power of beautiful imagination and beautiful written language.
The possibility of truth within childhood tales.
The possibility, no the brilliance of A Summer of Drowning.
In a world of rationality, and evidence, and congruent truth, escape the jabber of the world into your desolate mind. Opt for the illogical, the improbable, the illusory hallucination, The cosmos of fiction and the world of the written. Of a place hidden in the cold woods and wet meadows where, one summer, the huldra stood and watched two boys drown, one foreigner disappear, and an old man vanish, but not die.
Escape reality, and live your solitary life amongst your books and remember, those who read, have seen more, experienced more, felt more on the inside than those who live on the outside.
Yours Truly,
Delphine, the Babbler
January 24, 2014
A Summer of Drowning is a beautiful man, in book form. The kind who sits in a corner of a room, sipping his fine wine, flipping through some old dog-eared children's book of tales while a party goes on around him. And then, finally, when you approach, manages to be both overblown and self-effacing, looping back on his favorite words, taking too long to say anything, and eventually being so unironic that you are sure that he is lying about something.
While this is a book about a young woman in a remote island up in the Arctic Circle during a summer when two classmates are found, in inexplicable circumstances, drowned just a few days apart and the aftermath as she deals with various people in her life [and more deaths]; it is actually a book about the way metaphor brushes right up against the everyday and the way we weave stories about ourselves. If you were to focus on the central narrative, the book would be only about sixty pages long. Then you take every sentence and you find out how to say it three times, and then you add in meandering that has nothing to do with the narrative, and then you let it drift and weave and bob and stretch and skew and dance and all the other things poets like to do with the language—the blurb on the cover affirming that John Burnside is a poet and a novelist, which it holds to be rare—and you end up around three hundred plus pages and the long, terrible sensation that somehow the whole point of this whole thing was that you have been witness to either an unreliable narrator who missed what was going on or is choosing to lie about what was going on. The conceit of the story is that the character is reflecting, ten years after, upon the summer of drowning but she is so precisely correct with all of her summations and that even taking into consideration hindsight, you cannot help but to wonder how much editing she has made, as protagonist and witness.
Beyond that, most of my initial paragraph is true. It is a beautiful book. It is overblown. It is serious. It is tedious. It is self-effacing. It is self-loving. It weaves back and forth across myth structures and it gets caught up on everyday materials. It is contradictory because presented, unironically, it is a book about a self-centered person who spends three hundred pages trying to make sure that you, the reader, know that she and her Mother are perfectly fine, and how you should judge everyone else for being less than perfectly fine, and yet she continues to make that state of happiness and grace sound like sadness and tragedy. There is a play on the darkness of the midnight sun, the night that is still night but is also lit, and that works as any as a central image to the book. And that is a simplification, sure, but beyond said simplifying, the book is mostly about the back and forth meanderings of a person in a summer where a lot of things kind of happened, but mostly didn't, and hearsay is the only real indicator of anything.
It is wonderful, though, in its best moments: the dissection of the Narcissus myth, the contrasts of the huldra in the story, the play on untold stories, the hint that precise maps are useless while imprecise maps are longer lasting [a hint, again, that the story is *not* meant to be taken unironically, though good luck teasing the truth from it], and the general building of fear and horror without ever acknowledging that it exists. It just knows that it is wonderful and, like a person too assured of their own good looks, that is part of the problem.
While this is a book about a young woman in a remote island up in the Arctic Circle during a summer when two classmates are found, in inexplicable circumstances, drowned just a few days apart and the aftermath as she deals with various people in her life [and more deaths]; it is actually a book about the way metaphor brushes right up against the everyday and the way we weave stories about ourselves. If you were to focus on the central narrative, the book would be only about sixty pages long. Then you take every sentence and you find out how to say it three times, and then you add in meandering that has nothing to do with the narrative, and then you let it drift and weave and bob and stretch and skew and dance and all the other things poets like to do with the language—the blurb on the cover affirming that John Burnside is a poet and a novelist, which it holds to be rare—and you end up around three hundred plus pages and the long, terrible sensation that somehow the whole point of this whole thing was that you have been witness to either an unreliable narrator who missed what was going on or is choosing to lie about what was going on. The conceit of the story is that the character is reflecting, ten years after, upon the summer of drowning but she is so precisely correct with all of her summations and that even taking into consideration hindsight, you cannot help but to wonder how much editing she has made, as protagonist and witness.
Beyond that, most of my initial paragraph is true. It is a beautiful book. It is overblown. It is serious. It is tedious. It is self-effacing. It is self-loving. It weaves back and forth across myth structures and it gets caught up on everyday materials. It is contradictory because presented, unironically, it is a book about a self-centered person who spends three hundred pages trying to make sure that you, the reader, know that she and her Mother are perfectly fine, and how you should judge everyone else for being less than perfectly fine, and yet she continues to make that state of happiness and grace sound like sadness and tragedy. There is a play on the darkness of the midnight sun, the night that is still night but is also lit, and that works as any as a central image to the book. And that is a simplification, sure, but beyond said simplifying, the book is mostly about the back and forth meanderings of a person in a summer where a lot of things kind of happened, but mostly didn't, and hearsay is the only real indicator of anything.
It is wonderful, though, in its best moments: the dissection of the Narcissus myth, the contrasts of the huldra in the story, the play on untold stories, the hint that precise maps are useless while imprecise maps are longer lasting [a hint, again, that the story is *not* meant to be taken unironically, though good luck teasing the truth from it], and the general building of fear and horror without ever acknowledging that it exists. It just knows that it is wonderful and, like a person too assured of their own good looks, that is part of the problem.
November 26, 2016
wooow. Evo tog osjećaja - ovo je knjiga za mene, od A do Ž, to je to. Napokon sam došla do knjige s kojom se ne želim rastati, atmosferu koju ne želim pustiti, likove koje sam tek počela nazirati i šire slike koja mi se tek počela otvarati... a već je gotovo. :(
Misterij, psihološka drama i prstohvat sna. Za mene savršenstvo. Skandinavska divljina, kamenje, kraj svijeta, bijele noći, u kojima na rubu Arktika nema sna ni za domaće, a ni za strance koji dolaze odmoriti živce - no umjesto toga nalaze nešto sasvim drugo. Ispričana glasom jedne djevojke, kćeri slikarice koja se povukla u osamu, priča nas uranja u svijet sjevera, rubova obala, rubova šuma, rubova općenito.
Odmah na početku saznajemo da će tog ljeta za vrijeme bijelih noći nekoliko ljudi nestati ili se utopiti, da postoji mogućnost da ih je odvela huldra, biće iz skandinavske mitologije, a sve će te događaje promatrati glavna protagonistica Liv.
Svaki lik je ovdje jako važan. Svaki je užasno važan jer kako radnja napreduje, shvatiš da nitko, ama baš nitko nije slučajno ovdje koliko god beznačajnim se činio na početku. Bio to stari Kyrre koji Liv pripovijeda priče, prosci koji se udvaraju majci, čudni gost Martin koji s odmara u gostinjskoj hytte ili nepoznata Kate koja se iznenada javlja pismom iz Londona i potresa svijet povučene slikarice i njene kćeri. Svatko stvara nove narativne linije, a tim gotovo savršenim postojanjem svih likova na svom mjestu nastaje odlično spletena, jasna i čista priča, unatoč svoj svojoj misterioznosti, začudnosti i nebrojenim "praznim mjestima", koje čitatelj mora popunjavati.
Čitajući ovu knjigu svako malo bi mi se javila scena iz filma "Picnic at hanging rock" iz 1975., filma koji me proganjao kad sam bila klinka. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073540/
"She looked like a Botticelli's angel", rekao je u tom filmu jedan od likova o djevojci koja je nestala na stijenama. A upravo će s Botticellijevom Venerom jedan od nestalih usporediti glavnu junakinju Liv.
I to je tek jedna od suptilnijih podudarnosti.
Sjeverni pisci su mi stvarno najprofinjeniji u predočavanju same biti čovjeka koja je tako kontrastna u odnosu s prirodom, srž postojanja ili bolje rečeno bivanja. Ritam i atmosfera podsjećaju i na "Nebo i pakao" Jona Kalmana Stefanssona.
I ovu knjigu definitivno nabavljam za kućnu biblioteku.
Misterij, psihološka drama i prstohvat sna. Za mene savršenstvo. Skandinavska divljina, kamenje, kraj svijeta, bijele noći, u kojima na rubu Arktika nema sna ni za domaće, a ni za strance koji dolaze odmoriti živce - no umjesto toga nalaze nešto sasvim drugo. Ispričana glasom jedne djevojke, kćeri slikarice koja se povukla u osamu, priča nas uranja u svijet sjevera, rubova obala, rubova šuma, rubova općenito.
Odmah na početku saznajemo da će tog ljeta za vrijeme bijelih noći nekoliko ljudi nestati ili se utopiti, da postoji mogućnost da ih je odvela huldra, biće iz skandinavske mitologije, a sve će te događaje promatrati glavna protagonistica Liv.
Svaki lik je ovdje jako važan. Svaki je užasno važan jer kako radnja napreduje, shvatiš da nitko, ama baš nitko nije slučajno ovdje koliko god beznačajnim se činio na početku. Bio to stari Kyrre koji Liv pripovijeda priče, prosci koji se udvaraju majci, čudni gost Martin koji s odmara u gostinjskoj hytte ili nepoznata Kate koja se iznenada javlja pismom iz Londona i potresa svijet povučene slikarice i njene kćeri. Svatko stvara nove narativne linije, a tim gotovo savršenim postojanjem svih likova na svom mjestu nastaje odlično spletena, jasna i čista priča, unatoč svoj svojoj misterioznosti, začudnosti i nebrojenim "praznim mjestima", koje čitatelj mora popunjavati.
Čitajući ovu knjigu svako malo bi mi se javila scena iz filma "Picnic at hanging rock" iz 1975., filma koji me proganjao kad sam bila klinka. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073540/
"She looked like a Botticelli's angel", rekao je u tom filmu jedan od likova o djevojci koja je nestala na stijenama. A upravo će s Botticellijevom Venerom jedan od nestalih usporediti glavnu junakinju Liv.
I to je tek jedna od suptilnijih podudarnosti.
Sjeverni pisci su mi stvarno najprofinjeniji u predočavanju same biti čovjeka koja je tako kontrastna u odnosu s prirodom, srž postojanja ili bolje rečeno bivanja. Ritam i atmosfera podsjećaju i na "Nebo i pakao" Jona Kalmana Stefanssona.
I ovu knjigu definitivno nabavljam za kućnu biblioteku.
May 26, 2017
This puzzling, poetic, even mythic, novel does not easily give up its secrets to the reader, even with determined repeated readings of key passages. A young girl, Liv, who has just finished high school, lives on a remote Norwegian island with her famously reclusive artist mother. Angelika, who once painted portraits, has, for the past several years, surrendered to the deep solitude of the place and is mostly lost in the work of painting landscapes. She is a beautiful, remote, and unavailable woman, more angel than human. Her daughter appears to have taken after her, demonstrating none of the expected traits and interests of a typical adolescent girl. Liv's best friend is an elderly man, steeped in old Norse stories. When two teenaged brothers drown, Liv--taking her cues from Kyrre, the old storyteller--believes that their deaths are attributable to a dark-spirited girl, Maia, who may be a modern embodiment of the huldra, a siren figure from Norse mythology, known to lure the "susceptible" to their deaths.
The world, Burnside intimates in this novel, is a great, unexplained mystery. Its meaning or, rather, the meaning of human events, is opaque. Liv grapples with the unresolved mystery of several deaths over the course of one arctic summer, and barely evades the clutches of madness in the process. In the end, it seems that the old stories, the myths, provide a structure, a narrative, if not a full explanation, for making sense of the strange, dark forces of life.
The world, Burnside intimates in this novel, is a great, unexplained mystery. Its meaning or, rather, the meaning of human events, is opaque. Liv grapples with the unresolved mystery of several deaths over the course of one arctic summer, and barely evades the clutches of madness in the process. In the end, it seems that the old stories, the myths, provide a structure, a narrative, if not a full explanation, for making sense of the strange, dark forces of life.
May 29, 2017
This was truly dreadful. The adage of good story telling is show not tell. This meandered from one over written scene to the next.
There is so much padding if this book was a vase and thrown of the Empire State building it would bounce.
18 year-old Liv is the unreliable narrator of this tale which may or may not involve a Pserin like creature from Norwegian folklore, I really couldn’t tell what was happening and then for no purpose the story shot off at a tangent as Liv went to England to visit her supposed father who is dying. Unless I missed something not sure if this is resolved.
The whole book left me thinking so what. I just wanted the torture to end when I got to the last page. I had to finish it for a book club.
There is so much padding if this book was a vase and thrown of the Empire State building it would bounce.
18 year-old Liv is the unreliable narrator of this tale which may or may not involve a Pserin like creature from Norwegian folklore, I really couldn’t tell what was happening and then for no purpose the story shot off at a tangent as Liv went to England to visit her supposed father who is dying. Unless I missed something not sure if this is resolved.
The whole book left me thinking so what. I just wanted the torture to end when I got to the last page. I had to finish it for a book club.
December 25, 2018
A strange, intoxicatingly analytical and poetic book that steps neatly between paranoia and mythology, admitting the impossibility of separating the two with a clean line.
September 29, 2020
I'd give A Summer of Drowning 3.5 stars if I could, because it does deserve more than 3 but certainly not a 4, in my opinion. This book leaves me in sort of an in-between place, which is somewhat appropriate, since it takes place in an in between place. There something of the Russian masters to this, a slow-building crisis that exists half-way between the mystical and madness. As a Canadian, I appreciate and understand this tale of the far north. It is somehow easier to believe in fairy tales in the far north of short summers full of sunlight and long winters of darkness, of land that is open and seemingly empty but full of shadows and ghosts that flit at the edge of sight and sanity.
I did not enjoy reading A Summer of Drowning. Yet, I did like the story. I can't quite decide though if it is a beautiful story told badly, or a poor story told beautifully. There is a little of both in this book. It's vague and non-committal, but also arrogant in it's surety. Although by "it", I mean the narrator, Liv. She is an 18 year old girl, naive of the world and relationships, and also somehow wise beyond her years. I did not appreciate the certainty with which this girl decides the innermost thoughts and motivations of people around her, and that we're just meant to take her observations as truth. But I also disliked how she refused to make decisions about how to perceive people or events. The story was like the exploration of a story, as if Liv was trying to decide how to tell this tale and would go through several different versions of describing it, and then not come to any conclusion at all. A constant wandering, wandering through words and ideas without ever landing on anything. Like a pencil sketch done obsessively over and over- shading and lines, over and over, some heavy and dark, some fine and light and thin, but then the page is crumbled up and thrown away before you can tell what the sketch was meant to be. Over and over and over. Sketch, sketch, scribble, scribble, crumple and toss. So that you never know anything definitively. So that at the end of the story, all you have are some guesses and impressions, where the plot was never important at all, because the entire story was not about the story but about the experiment of telling a story. And for my part, the experiment failed. For a few steps in the process, it seemed promising, but ultimately, it just didn't pan out. Shame.
I did not enjoy reading A Summer of Drowning. Yet, I did like the story. I can't quite decide though if it is a beautiful story told badly, or a poor story told beautifully. There is a little of both in this book. It's vague and non-committal, but also arrogant in it's surety. Although by "it", I mean the narrator, Liv. She is an 18 year old girl, naive of the world and relationships, and also somehow wise beyond her years. I did not appreciate the certainty with which this girl decides the innermost thoughts and motivations of people around her, and that we're just meant to take her observations as truth. But I also disliked how she refused to make decisions about how to perceive people or events. The story was like the exploration of a story, as if Liv was trying to decide how to tell this tale and would go through several different versions of describing it, and then not come to any conclusion at all. A constant wandering, wandering through words and ideas without ever landing on anything. Like a pencil sketch done obsessively over and over- shading and lines, over and over, some heavy and dark, some fine and light and thin, but then the page is crumbled up and thrown away before you can tell what the sketch was meant to be. Over and over and over. Sketch, sketch, scribble, scribble, crumple and toss. So that you never know anything definitively. So that at the end of the story, all you have are some guesses and impressions, where the plot was never important at all, because the entire story was not about the story but about the experiment of telling a story. And for my part, the experiment failed. For a few steps in the process, it seemed promising, but ultimately, it just didn't pan out. Shame.
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