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I’m not certain if that’s meant to be a sales pitch or a warning. However, it’s in relation to the author Jon Fosse whose 40-year career as an author and playwright in Norway have seen him labelled “the new Beckett” and “the new Isben” respectively.
The press blurb gives us the plot in a suitably ambiguous tone:
A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity.
And with the novella running to 56 pages, its safe to say this succinctly describes the plot. However, it’s all about the details.
It's not a million miles away from a book I reviewed on here a few years ago called Fin. But while that book was overtly spiritual, A Shining is less so and somewhat mysterious in what it is subjecting the protagonist to. Is he having a mental breakdown, have forces beyond his understanding compelled him to enter the forest, is he making it up? He doesn’t seem to be fearful of his situation, maybe more bemused and quizzical. This placidness renders him something of a blank canvass for the reader but whether that is good or bad is up for debate.
Take this segment where he believes that his parents are in the forest with him:
She says: you don’t know the way—and he says no and she says she was sure he knew where the way was, he always knew the way, she couldn’t remember a single time when he hadn’t known the way, she was sure he knew the way, she would never have imagined anything else, she says and she’s stopped, and she’s let go of my father’s arm and now she’s looking up at him, and she says, and her voice sounds scared: you don’t know the way, you can’t find the way back home—and my father shakes his head. She says: so why did we walk so far into the forest—and my father doesn’t answer, he just stands there stiffly. She says: answer me. He says: but we came here together. She says: no, it was you who dragged me into the forest. He says: but you wanted to find him.
There are a few interpretations here: the narrator’s fear that his parents have no interest in him manifests, he’s befuddled (which comes through in the imaginary dialogue) or there’s my belief that it doesn’t give the reader enough to work with. Coupled with the narrator being less of a defined personality and more of a Rorschach test and it all feels like a lot of (admittedly excellent) style and little substance which is reinforced by this quote:
…this sudden urge to drive off somewhere had brought me to a forest. And there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or another, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else.
Unsurprisingly, many reviewers have picked up on the Christian angle that permeates throughout the text. Certainly, the title and premise seem to reference the phrase “Jai guru deva om” which, roughly translated, means “glory to the shining remover of darkness.” But, although I certainly recognise this interpretation, I maintain that Fosse writes in such an oblique, ambivalent manner that these issues are never developed not debunked.
Enjoyable, and evocative in places, but very much a literary game.
Jon Fosse (tr. Damion Searls), 2024, A Shining. Fitzcarraldo Editions. ISBN-13: 978-1804271032
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.
When a novella hits the spot it really does. The last one I remember reading is Brokeback Mountain
ReplyDeleteA very underrated medium it has to be said. I think a good lot of authors should focus less on writing an 800 page epic and give us more novellas.
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