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A review by bookjin
We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
4.0
This is a fantastic book. The narrative voice takes a little getting used to, but it's so beautifully written (and so beautifully translated) that it's easy to lose yourself in the story.
The novel spans the course of about a century, with a focus on three generations of men -- Laurids Madsen, his son Albert, and Albert's mentee Knud Erik. The cast of characters is actually quite large, as the entire town's story is really being told here, but it mostly follows those three men as they grow up and go to sea. Now that I'm looking back on it, I feel a little bit as if I've read three books instead of one, just with how much time passes and how much happens to each man. Which is hardly a bad thing; I thoroughly enjoyed all three.
The novel spans the course of about a century, with a focus on three generations of men -- Laurids Madsen, his son Albert, and Albert's mentee Knud Erik. The cast of characters is actually quite large, as the entire town's story is really being told here, but it mostly follows those three men as they grow up and go to sea. Now that I'm looking back on it, I feel a little bit as if I've read three books instead of one, just with how much time passes and how much happens to each man. Which is hardly a bad thing; I thoroughly enjoyed all three.