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Days In The History Of Silence (2013)

by Merethe Lindstrøm(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1590515951 (ISBN13: 9781590515952)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Other Press

review 1: På mange måder tiltalte bogens stille stemme mig. Interessante temaer blev kredset om - og alligevel fik jeg gang på gang oplevelsen af, at det smuttede fra mig. Givetvis tiltænkt, men resultatet blev, fortællingen tabte mig undervejs. Selvom jeg hver gang genoptog, ender helhedsvurderingen på det middelmådige 3. Pudsigt nok føler jeg ikke, fortællingen skulle være middelmådig; da slet ikke det fine sprog taget i betragtning. Måske den ville have virket bedre som flere noveller i samme bog?
review 2: An elderly Norwegian couple (living in a city which may be Bergen?) keep themselves to themselves, and have no friends. The husband Simon, a former physician, has a form of dementia and says very little - one of the many silences of the book. The wife, ... morethe narrator, is a former teacher, and a rather cold character. Both have their own secrets (he is Jewish, and spent the war years in another country in hiding and in enforced silence, but his children know nothing about his past: she had a child before her marriage, and gave the baby up for adoption after six months, having failed to bond with him. Again, the adult daughters know nothing about this). The couple have another hidden thing, the reason for the dismissal of their home help who had become a friend. Some of these secrets are never really unravelled, unless I missed the point (is the young man whose grave the wife visits actually her lost son? Or is that only what she may be thinking? What is the significance of the intruder episode?) There is no real conclusion either - will she get round to filling in the form which will send her husband into a care home, or not? However, this is a beautifully written book, and its picture of the ageing process and of the long-term effects of wartime experiences is very believable (I have an example close to home of the secrets of a family, or at least one person's view of it, emerging only through fairly toxic written accounts found in the home of an elderly person who never actually discussed any of the events with anyone. Perhaps I should write a novel about it!)A story which will make you think and which might come back to haunt you. less

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