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challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Aliss at the Fire was my pick for this month's prompt in the Read Good Challenge - "No-paragraph-break-vember. Read a book with few or no paragraph breaks ". It's a fairly slim novella by the 2023 Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, but it doesn't read particulalry quickly. The lack of paragraph breaks combined with the fever dream style, which seamlessly intermingled the past with the present and combined the perspectives of different people as though they were one, really required me to slow down and pay careful attention. The sad, melancholic atmosphere and the harsh unforgiving environment were really well portrayed, as was the heartbreaking nature of grief. The long flowing sentences, the repetition of words and phrases, and the recurring imagery - fjord, boat, fire - effectively combined to convey the repetitive nature of the tragedy and losses that befell generation after generation of one family. They also gave this book a haunting, other worldly, almost fable-like feel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Grief
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
An evocative portrait of three generations of family trauma on the fjords of Norway. I don't typically go in much for stream-of-consciousness, but I liked Fosse's flow here as he flitted between timelines and perspectives without the burden of punctuation. It worked well for this short piece, which was heavy on atmosphere and emotion. I would be interested to read some of his plays!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Grief
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I hated this book.
Review done!
No, for real this book was definitely an unenjoyable reading experience for me and I personally would not recommend it at all. I’ll start with the plot which follows a woman called Signe in 2002 as she sits on a bench at home, she then begins to see herself over twenty years prior on the day her husband Alse took his boat out into the fjord but never returned. There is sort of more to the story as the couple also see long-dead relatives of Alse, including the titular Aliss, his great-great grandmother. But on the whole externally little happens and the prose does switch POV with both rehashing the same events. The writing is alrightish, it’s rather pleasant and transportive at times with a lot of Norwegian-focused-ness (not a word I know) but my god is it jarring. Fosse’s prose is so repetitive, tedious and annoying! It’s horrible to read and he uses ‘she thinks’ and ‘he thinks’ so many times, like every three lines! Nope, no way could I get on board with this at all. It’s also very much stream of consciousness and hallucinatory with sentences that run over two-five pages that just go on and on… and on and on and on. The transitions between the POVs are also very harsh with no real gradient that eases between the two.
Overall, I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with the story or characters as such, but it’s the writing that made me really hate this book. Others have recommended reading this like an introduction to Fosse’s other works with his Septology being a longer version in some sense. If this is the case then I will certainly not be picking up anymore books by him, I’ll have to check it’s a ‘normally’ formatted prose beforehand.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Mental illness, Grief