Translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Spoiler alert
I can’t really talk about this book without revealing what I learned about it by the end of it, and I suspect that the confusion the reader is experiences is completely intentional on the part of the author. Told as a narrative in three alternating parts, named for their protagonists Harriet, Oskar and Yana, I found myself having to flip back to clearly distinguish the stories of the three characters because events and references kept recurring. I was starting to think that perhaps the problem was me, but having worked out what was going on by the end, I’m reassured that I understood more of it than I thought I did while reading.
There are three journeys, all heading towards Malma Station. (Any such place? I had heard of Malmo, but not Malma). It is a small station, surrounded by forest, with a lake. Our three travellers Harriet, Oskar and Yana are actually all related, but the journeys they are taking are all decades apart. Harriet, a young girl, is travelling with her father to bury her pet rabbit by the lakeside. Her mother and sister live in Malma, but Harriet has not seen them in a long time after the family fractured and the children were divided between the parents. Oskar is Harriet’s husband, decades later, and he is returning to Malma with Harriet who wants to revisit her earlier trip to Malma with her father. Oskar is frustrated by Harriet’s evasions, flightiness and infidelity, and their marriage is in tatters. Yana (whose name we later learn is an acronym for ‘You Are Not Alone’) is the daughter of Harriet and Oskar, and like her mother she too is the child of a broken relationship and she, too, lost her mother. She is travelling with a photo album that she has inherited after her father’s death, and she too is undertaking a pilgrimage to recover lost times. There is a sense of foreboding which pervades the novel as the train makes its way to Malma, but this dread is not always justified. In fact, I found the ending rather an anti-climax, albeit a disturbing one.
The circularity of the book is intentional. Mistakes and misjudgments are repeated across the generations, as children hear adult conversations that they shouldn’t, and are shuffled around like chess pieces. The book is steeped in unhappiness and families are opaque, with an edge of danger.
My library has decided that this book is a ‘saga’ on the label on the side. Even though it’s about three generations, it is not a ‘saga’ in the usual sense of the word. It’s far more intense than that, as these three generations do not so much move on and keep revolving around a hard knot of hurt and betrayal.
My rating: 7/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Read because: I think I must have read a review of it somewhere, although I can’t find where.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 