Customer Reviews

Half Brother

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the biggest, most ambitiously conceived, and richly imagined novels ever, The Half-Brother has already won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and it has been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. A haunting story of four generations of a strange Norwegian family, each member of which is "different" in some respect, this is as complete a family saga as you will find. Every character is fully delineated, and all his/her relationships and relevant past history are brought to life here, filtered through the mind of Barnum Nilsen, the son of a circus worker and grifter. Barnum's unusual but ultimately close relationship with his brother Fred, the product of his mother's rape by a soldier, is at the heart of the novel, with Fred being huge, active, and very physical while Barnum is unusually small, more passive, and cerebral. Two halves of the same coin, neither brother is very successful alone.

Four generations of the family live together, and some "absent" characters, who have affected the lives of family members, "live on" through objects that they have left behind with the family. Barnum and Fred often seek a connection to the past by reading the last letter their great-grandfather sent from Greenland before he vanished. Vera's best friend Rakel leaves Vera with a treasured ring, just before she is taken during the Nazi occupation of Norway. Barnum buys a ring for his first girlfriend, and it has meaning for him even when he is middle-aged. "We do not disappear without a trace," Barnum learns. "We leave a wake that never quite disappears, a gash in time."

As this immense story unfolds, the reader finds the action harking backward, forward, and in upon itself, with silence, disappearances, and deaths pervading the action. Vera and Fred both go silent for months as a result of trauma. The great-grandfather and Vera's father never appear, and Arnold Nilsen, Barnum's father, disappears periodically after his marriage to Vera, as does Fred, the half-brother. Permanent disappearance, i.e., death, occurs to the Old One and a host of other characters, and accidents involving still other characters cast a pall over much of the novel, highlighting the "aloneness" of each person, and the quixotic nature of fate. Still, there is much humor here as the characters keep soldiering on.

This is a huge book, but the pages fly by, despite the fact that the author does not insert much paragraphing. Whole pages continue without any breaks at all, and dialogue is simply imbedded within paragraphs. With hundreds of well-drawn, memorable scenes, dozens of carefully presented characters whose entire lives and history you know completely, surprises buried within seemingly ordinary tales, and the creation of a complete and unique universe, this is a novel which will richly reward the reader who is not intimidated by its size. Mary Whipple

"The Half-Brother", written in 2001, is probably one of the most significant pieces of fiction of the last decade. It spans over 600 pages and the prose flows without interruption. Everything falls into place, although the structure of the novel is rather complicated. It consists of several different stories, lives of various people, interwoven and intercrossed, very dramatic. It is not a simple novel and requires concentrated attention, but it is worth it.

The story is told by Barnum, emerging screenplay writer, who fights between his desire for success and scorn for hypocrisy in the Hollywood world. Barnum tells his family saga, starting with the war, the day when his half-brother, Fred, was conceived in the attic of the house in Norway where his mother, Vera, Vera's mother, Boletta, and Vera's grandmother, known as The Old One, lived. How the women deal with it, is a whole separate story. The childhood of Barnum's father, Arnold Nilsen, and the events leading to him and Vera meeting, are another story, and Barnum's life - another. Almost too much for one book... But all these themes are perfectly connected.

There are three women in the family - men remain somehow elusive, some of them disappearing forever, some mourned, some not, some (Fred's father) not really appearing, and some, like Arnold (strong-willed and imposing a lot onto the family life, making his definite mark - like Barnum's name; his words which are probably his motto, I wrote as the title to this review) or Fred (equally strong, however disruptive personality), have always a hint of mystery about them. All the characters, however common they appear, are absolutely original and their lives and personalities are far from ordinary. There are lots of little anecdotes, which could be developed into whole chapters... Barnum's psychological complexity is revealed in most detail, we follow him from his earliest childhood (the dancing lessons...) through teenage years, until the film festival, which is the present moment in the novel. Barnum's screenplay "The Fattening" is included as a separate chapter, and it is a powerful insight into his mind.

This book is timeless and universal. Although it is set in Norway and starts with the war, which is important for the understanding of the protagonists (Vera's friend from Jewish family disappears forever), and a lot of other events mark the timeline or are alluded to (The Beatles' concert in Hamburg, or the explorers' trip to Greenland, for example), I believe it will not age and will be a delight to read years from now.

The Half Brother
Lars Saabye Christensen
Arcadia Books Ltd. 2003

This is a book that cries out to be read. It is, as one reviewer has put it, 'unputdownable.' It is a big book - in the English translation 764 pages.

Read it please. Read it please because it is a masterpiece in two of the three essentials of all great literature and art. It creates in the mind a sense of place and a sense of time.

Read it please because, like Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' or Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind' it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

If you have read Dostoevsky - remember Raskolnikov in 'Crime and Punishment.' If you have read Knut Hamsun's 'Hunger' - remember the streets of Oslo. If you have read neither - do so now. Recall if you can the spirit of Lauren Bacall and Bogart's line "I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts."

It is rare that a translator can capture the spirit of the original. Kenneth Steven has achieved this. In a translators note he writes: 'All translation is a compromise; there are inevitable losses in bringing a richly woven literary text from its native tongue. It is not the thousands of words that pose the difficulty, it is the single words that have been chosen by the author for their resonance, for their resemblance to other words in the language, their interplay with different elements of the text.' A poet, Steven has isolated the words and given them their resonance.

The story begins with a rape and ends in an enigma. On page 659 you will read: "Tme and place; time seen from the place, and, not least, the place seen through time."

Action there is - this is no 'Waiting for Godot.' But when you have read from cover to cover you will be left with the words: "To tell you all this."

There can be no doubt but that this book has its place in literary history - not only as the winner of the Nordic Pize for Literature 2002 but also as a landmark in the long march from Beowulf to Eliot, Joyce, Dylan Thomas and beyond. It deserves its place in the canon of great literature.

Lars Saabye Christensen is at his best presenting the cosmos of childhood and family. Towards the end he seems to run out of steam as if he is anxious to get on with the next 764 pages. We look forward to reading them.

... my gosh, is it ever worth it. For me this book started as a multiple-starter, I think I read the first few pages about 7 times, with many books inbetween.

Please - persist with it. Whether it's the translation of a book from a different era than your own, a different language or a different society, you WILL be drawn into this novel with it's strange characters, and you will grow to love them even as you fail to understand them.

This book is an epic, make no doubt about it. Give it a go - it will stay with you for many years.

A marvelous, rich, meandering novel that makes Jonathan Franzen's efforts pale in comparison. The Norwegians really do it better. A few moments moments lost in the implausibility of it all, but otherwise the story of the two damaged half-brothers carries you right along.

Not having read any Norwegian literature since "Sophie's World," I was expecting something foreign and ethereal, a sort of psychological drama that would take place in one of those 480-square-foot Ikea showrooms. However, there is no escaping America, which makes its appearance in the form of Lauren Bacall in the first pages of Christiensen's novel and then reappears frequently, as a Buick Roadmaster in its most sinister incarnation. I hear they have high rates of alcoholism and suicide in Norway. After reading The Half Brother, I believe it; the cruelties of everyday life in Oslo that the author seems to take for granted are rather hard to take, particularly when meted out to young children. Other reviewers have called this novel "compulsively readable" and so it is, in the same way that foods that are not necessarily good for us and not all that good tasting can sometimes become "compulsively edible." Readers who keep going until they have polished off the whole platter of lutfisk will be glad they did. Despite the novel's large scope, Christensen ties it all up by the end and gives meaning to everything that has gone on before, except perhaps for a near-miss with the Fab Four that seems somewhat contrived in a very Hollywood way.