Kate Atkinson and Karin
Fossum are similar writers, similarly excellent writers, each from a north
land, each with a similar detective, who, like every other crime novel
detective is middle-aged, divorced or widowed, single but looking, jaded but
still trying. Both Atkinson and Fossum are intrigued by how one event leads to
another, but Atkinson wants to see how one event leads to another in action.
Fossum wants to see what happens inside the character’s brain as one event
follows another. Atkinson looks outside; Fossum looks with the inward eye, in
this case, Eva’s Eye.
Eva’s eye has so many
dimensions. She is a painter, with a unique way of trying to find light in
darkness. She is also able to see many possibilities, how Michio Koku describes
human identity, “the ability to simulate the future,” an ability animals lack. Eva
definitely does not lack it. She sees so many possible futures, for her
daughter, for her father, for her friend, for her self, for revenge.
This is the first of
Fossum’s Inspector Sejer novels. Apparently daughter Mary Beth read my many
whines about always receiving the 2nd in a series before the first
when I receive a gift book, and so she went clear back to 1995 to get the first
in this series, although I would not have been able to read it until 2002,
because that is when James Anderson translated it from Norwegian.
I don’t ready many
Norwegian crime writers, although if we lump Scandinavians together, as
Americans tend to do, we could include Sweden’s late Steig Larrson, [The Lisbeth
Salendar Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series],
because there aren’t many, to my knowledge, besides Jo Nesbo, and yes, I write
these convoluted sentences so that your brain will be exercised so well you
won’t get dementia in old age. Nesbo is excellent, but dark. I like Fossum
better. She’s certainly not “light,” but like Eva as she paints, Fossum thinks
there is light that is worth looking for.
It’s tricky to read a translation.
If you are confused, you’re not sure if it’s because of the author or the translator.
I suspect translator James Anderson is British, for at more than one point the
characters use the word “shan’t.”
It’s always a little harder
to follow a foreign work. Unless you have been there, you don’t know the
layout, and you don’t know how much a kroner is. When someone pays a thousand
kroner for something, is that a lot, or is it like Italian lire?
That’s part of the fun of
reading a foreign author, though. You get to be some place different, have to
figure out how much a kroner is worth or if a Figueroa is a small or large car.
One of the confusing aspects
of writing/translation in this book is the concept of size. Everyone keeps
referring to the setting as a “small” town, but at one point the detective
figures a trip to see a witness will take him 30 minutes. In my thinking, it
will never take that long to get somewhere in a “small” town.
Inspector Slejus is appealing,
but actually a minor character in this novel. Yes, it’s his series, and he
solves the crime, but this book is really about Eva, and her eye. Note to
daughters: I look forward to getting to know Slejus better in subsequent
novels.
Eva’s Eye is
a really good read.
John
Robert McFarland
This
started as an author blog, but writing guru Kristen Lamb says author blogs are
counter-productive, that blogs need to be “high concept.” I have no idea what
that means, but this blog is now high concept.
Daughter
Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in
America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press,
in 2015.
My
novel, VETS, about four handicapped
and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will
be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.
I tweet as yooper1721.
