Fiction, Reviews

‘Closed For Winter,’ by Jorn Lier Horst

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Closed For Winter

Investigating a murder case with an unknown perpetrator was like picking the label off a beer bottle. It was never possible to remove it in one piece. Instead it had to be torn off one ragged little section at a time.

This is the second book available in English, in Jorn Lier Horst’s William Wisting police procedural series, set in Norway. In Closed For Winter, Wisting’s daughter Line, a journalist, has broken up with her slightly shady boyfriend, and is spending time at her father’s seaside cottage. While she’s there, the police are called to a cottage not far away. Several cottages have been broken into and robbed, but in one of them a dead body has been found. The victim has been shot and bludgeoned, and he’s found wearing a balaclava over his face. An ambulance comes to remove the body, but it gets hijacked and set on fire. Then a second gunshot victim is found dead in a beached boat.

As Inspector Wisting and his team try to identify the dead and figure out what’s going on, they are also concerned with rumors of tensions among criminal gangs and the plans (revealed by an informant) of a particular gang to rob a bank vault. The plot tension rises constantly, and there are a couple very neat surprises at the end.

I liked Closed For Winter. It didn’t have the ordinary feel of Scandinavian Noir. There’s a strong dose of compassion for people forced into crime by poverty, balanced with a steadfast defense of the law. These are character-driven stories, and that pleases me.

Recommended. Cautions for language and mature subject matter.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dregs,’ by Jorn Lier Horst

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Dregs

You probably recall how I feel about “Scandinavian Noir” mysteries. In general I consider them dank, grotesquely nihilistic, and overrated. However, I recently got a tip about Jorn Lier Horst’s Norwegian series starring Chief Inspector William Wisting (you pronounce the “W’s” as “V’s”). I’m quite enjoying them, to my considerable surprise.

William Wisting is a detective in the small community of Larvik, in the general area of Oslo. He’s a widower, has a girlfriend, and gets on well with his two adult children. His daughter Line (pronounced “LEE-neh”) is a newspaper journalist. Although Wisting worries about the risks she takes in her work, he respects her talent and industry, and she’s happy to assist him in his research from time to time.

Dregs is not the first book in the Wisting series (nor the first I read) but it’s the first in sequence to be translated into English, so I’m reviewing it first. The story begins with the discovery of an athletic shoe (a “trainer” as they call them in Europe), washed up on a beach. The shoe is a left shoe, and it contains a human foot. A few days later another shoe and foot wash up – but it’s another left foot. And then there’s another, also a left. Continue reading ‘Dregs,’ by Jorn Lier Horst →

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Hell’s Princess,’ by Harold Schechter

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Hell's Princess

How they resisted the temptation to title this book, “Hell’s Belle,” I will never understand.

We Norwegian-Americans are generally reconciled to the fact that we occupy a secondary (at best) tier in American culture. But we take pride in our notabale sons and daughters: Politicians like Hubert Humphrey, scientists like Norman Borlaug, actors like Harry Morgan.

There is one prominent Norwegian American, though, whom most of us had never heard of (I had, but I’m fairly remarkable): Belle Gunness of LaPorte, Indiana, one of America’s first known serial killers and one of her few female serial killers. She also scores pretty high in the body count tallies.

Hell’s Princess, by true crime author Harold Schechter, tells her grisly story in a scholarly and judicious manner. Though the ending (as he admits) is kind of anticlimactic.

Belle Gunness was born in Norway in 1859; she was a large, unlovely woman and the victim of rape. She immigrated to America, worked hard, and had a reputation for kindness to children. But somewhere along the line she determined to be rich, and chose an easy road to wealth. Continue reading ‘Hell’s Princess,’ by Harold Schechter →

Publishing, Writing

‘Where have the words gone?’

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My wife is beginning to write a book. Her editor is the son of a Nobel laureate, but that is Oldthink. Because he is a clever man who keeps his finger on the pulse, he has my wife recording podcasts even before the book is begun.

Richard Brookhiser of National Review writes about his wife podcasting the subject of her book as she writes it, giving a glimpse perhaps of the future of words. (via Prufrock News)

Non-fiction

No Little Women, by Aimee Byrd

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[W]omen are created in the image of God as necessary allies to men in carrying out his mission. Because of this, women are to be good theologians with informed convictions. We are to take this call seriously and invest quality time in our theological growth and Bible study within the context of our local church as a foundation to our service and contributions to the church, our families, and society.

Aimee Byrd, author of Theological Fitness: Why We Need a Fighting Faith and other books, took up the topic of women in the church in her thoroughly reasonably and well-written book No Little Women.  The title comes from 2 Timothy 3:6-7, “For among them are those [wicked teachers] who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” Do such teachers creep around today and do they find opportunities among church women who know something but not enough of the Bible?

Byrd worries that the ministry leaders of most of our churches give too little attention to their women’s ministry studies, allowing them to more-or-less do their own thing with any Bible-related study they find appealing. As a result, writers and conference speakers are using Christian language to teach unChristian principles to increasing audiences. And women are more open to these principles by the simple fact they read more. If their pastors give implicit approval to whatever bears a Christian label and no other instruction or training in the faith, then they can easily be led astray.

I worry many of our churches lack the theological grounding to know they are going astray until the false doctrines have been laid and momentum gained. I remember a local Southern Baptist pastor telling me what he was teaching to new congregation (catechism and careful exposition), and one woman thanked him for trusting them enough to wrestle with big ideas. That was unusual.

I thought of that while reading Byrd’s recommendations to leaders for gaining the attention and trust of the women in their congregations. Understand, she said, that the body of Christ is both male and female and both male and female should be well-versed in God’s word. Also recognize while women may not be allowed in ordained teaching roles, they do teach–all the time. Mothers, sisters, and wives exercise their faith every day in diverse ways. Some bear witness to the truth, others to the lies of the world.

Men need women as necessary allies in the faith to speak the truth in love, to rebuke deception, guard affection, rally motivation, and rejoice over the work the Lord is doing in his people. Therefore, women need the same attentive training men receive.

Byrd briefly describes how, since the beginning of our country, many women have stepped up as spiritual leaders to take eager congregations away from God’s Word. “There is a common thread in the bad theology: these women have all claimed to have received special revelation from God.” But by equipping women to be the necessary and competent allies the church needs we can hold dear the truths of God for another generation.

(Photo by Bethany Laird on Unsplash)

Authors, Fiction

Did Crime and Punishment Remake the Novel?

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Of course, Dostoevsky’s claim to have invented a new literary genre doesn’t solely rest on Crime and Punishment. Although it was published when he was 45, after so many books and setbacks, it marked a breakthrough, not a culmination. Its resemblance to Hamlet resides both in its details (fatherless ex-student, bookish sidekick, philosophy, mumbling, murder) and in its peculiar status, as an extraordinary achievement that also serves as the preparation for a trio of more ambitiously unsettling tragedies.

Various touches point towards Dostoevsky’s later novels: a reflection on the “holy fool” (The Idiot), a dream involving a city-wide disease (The Possessed), a smattering of theodicy (The Brothers Karamazov). It is not an insult to Crime and Punishment but a tribute to its author to say that his most famous book, the face he shows to the world, plays a more servile role within his body of work, something like a hinge, or border – a spin-off that doubles as a gateway drug to more exalted highs.

Leo Robson writes of the importance of Crime and Punishment to its author and the literary world, even those who disliked it. (via Prufrock News)

Uncategorized, Writing

Commitment (in two senses)

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Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev

I’m still keyed up about my sudden admittance to the ragged outskirts of the movie industry. For all I know, this translation experiment will be a failure, culminating in shame and derisive laughter. And yet it seems to be going pretty well so far. Which leads me to ponder, after the manner of a script doctor, where this plot line in my life started.

It was a summer in the 1970s. I’d recently graduated from college, though I was still living in an upstairs apartment on campus. The woman I had fallen in love with, more than any other before or since, had recently left the country. I had a strong feeling that I’d never see her again (I was almost right), and that I would be forever sad and alone (I nailed that one). So what was I to do with the shards of my hardly-begun life?

I resolved to do two things. I would write a novel, and I would learn Norwegian.

My true motive for writing the novel was (I’m pretty sure) to Show Her. I would be a great and famous literary figure, and she would kick herself for missing out on a good thing every time she saw me guesting on the Carson Show.

That didn’t work out very well. The novel would be finished – eventually – and it would be published, about 20 years later. But to date it has failed to make me a beloved cultural icon.

My motive for learning Norwegian, I think, was that I had a vague idea that someday I’d travel to Norway, where I’d meet a wonderful woman who’d be impressed that I spoke her language and make me forget my sorrows.

That hasn’t worked out very well either.

But I stuck with the plan, by gum. And now the two of them together have snagged me an interesting job.

At this point, I suppose, I should close with a hackneyed meditation on the importance of perseverance.

But that’s only one possible lesson. Another is a similarly hackneyed bromide: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.”

Fortunately, insanity is no handicap in the film industry.

Publishing

You Think You’re Unpublished Now?

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A thousand trees have been planted in the Nordmarka forest, near Oslo, Norway, as a work of art, literature, and hope in dystopian days. It’s being called a work of art, framtidsbiblioteket  or The Future Library; and I don’t doubt it’s beautiful even now. Trees have a way about them.

The trees are to meant grow for 100 years (starting in 2014) and then be cut for the paper to publish anthologies with manuscripts that will be written over that hundred-year period. Participating writers will surrender their original work to the project and allow it to go unpublished until 2114, preventing anyone from knowing how pretentious and unreadable it is until after their death. The writers who submit something in 2100 will be the ones under pressure, because they will have living readers to engage at the next virtual book signing. If their work flops, it will only be another weight to drag the whole project under water.

Who’s going to care to read back fifty years to see whether one of these works will hold their interest? Other writers possibly. More likely it will be publishers who read through these anthologies to find a gem they can exploit for themselves. “Frizzik Notweilder’s Ghosts at Noon Know the Heimlich, written seventy years ago and published in the framtidsbiblioteket anthologies, is the novel of the century, now available through Simon & Zondervan publishers.”

And Notweilder won’t know a thing about it.

Uncategorized, Writing

The Norwegian word for ‘translator’ is ‘oversetter’

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From time to time on this blog, thanks to Phil’s patience and longsuffering, I review movies and TV shows. Sometimes they’re foreign productions, often Scandinavian ones. One of my most frequent complaints about foreign films is the poor quality of the English translations.

It appears I’ll now be in a position to do something about that problem.

Briefly stated, I responded a couple days ago to an inquiry in a Facebook group, asking for people with Norwegian translation skills and writing abilities. I figured I might as well take a shot, and today I have an agreement to work as a freelancer with Meteoritt (Meteorite), an Oslo-based company that does translation, closed captions, and subtitles for film and television productions.

They’ve got me working on a very interesting project right now – but I can’t tell you what it is. There’s a non-disclosure agreement, for reasons that make sense once you get involved. When the project is released, I’ll be able to tell you I worked on it.

Some of you may be asking (as I asked myself) “What will that mean for your novel-writing?”

Well, in the short run, it will make it difficult.

But in a few months, if things go as I expect, my day job situation is likely to change. At that time I’ll probably be in a position to spend more time on the novel.

Maybe all this won’t work out. Maybe I’ll find the company incompatible, or the work too challenging. But if it prospers, it could set me up for my old age in a very agreeable manner.

I’m very happy about this.

Non-fiction

The Thing Under the Bed is Depression

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In seasons like this, the straight truth is my best help. One truth my doctor told me early on was that this depression would probably find me after I had been home for a few weeks. And here it is, like a train pulling into the station right on time.

http://russ-ramsey.com/monster-in-the-dark-a-chapter-about-depression/

Book Reviews, Creative Culture