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He turned the key in the ignition. The motor started on the first try, as it always did, no matter the weather. Cylinders came to life; pumps began to work; intense heat ignited atomised fuel. The smell of diesel rose from the engine bay, like aromas in a kitchen, and the wheel began to vibrate gently between his hands. He listened to the knocking and thudding, the most comforting sound in all the world. This heart, with its strong, ropy muscles, which for all these years had worked beneath him.

This book was on the cozy-winter-reads list where I also got Finn Family Moomintroll and a few others that are still on my shelf. (I remember this list, but have not been able to re-find it.) The Ferryman and His Wife may sound a little odd for the cozy-reads concept, but bear with me. This brief novel (166 pages in my edition) details the end-of-life of the ferryman, Nils Vik.

At a quarter past five in the morning Nils Vik opened his eyes, and the last day of his life began.

Nils heads out into the Norwegian fjord where he has lived all his life (in the house that was once his parents’, where he has survived his own beloved wife, where they raised two daughters who have moved away to the city to lives of their own) and worked all his years on his boat. All these years, “he ferried people out of chaos and into safety.” On this last day, we see him pick up the dead, beginning with a well-loved dog, Luna, and including those he has ferried, friends, family, people he knew briefly or well; he visits with these, his lost, and all day he waits for his wife to appear. When she does, this last day is done. And in the reviewing of people (and creatures) he has known, we have learned much about Nils’ life, in retrospect and out of order. (The back of the book says ‘in reverse,’ but it’s not a reversed chronology, just a jumbled one. Like our memories.) Nils has been a good man – not a perfect one, but one we respect and appreciate. This is a beautiful book in how it studies just one brief day, in which you might say nothing much happens – but the whole of a lifetime is surveyed, and that life has involved love, conflict, generosity, and loss. It’s simple and gorgeous. Alison McCullough’s translation offers Grytten’s prose in equally simple, profound style. I took my time with this deceptively quiet but momentous story: short, but expansive.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: end of life, family, in translation, misc fiction |