Customer Reviews

Italian Shoes

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In his 26th novel, Sweden's top crime writer has eschewed the genre that has seen him sell 30 million books. Even so, fans of his Inspector Wallander novels will find much of what they love about the Skåne detective in the narrator of "Italian Shoes"--only given even more depth by the constant focus on a man struggling with guilt and emotional silence.

Fredrik is a surgeon who abandoned his career a decade ago because of a mistake he made during an operation. He refused to acknowledge his error and went to live alone on a remote island. One morning he sees a woman standing on the frozen sea. He discovers that she's the girlfriend he abandoned as a young man.

Harriet's arrival forces Fredrik to meet a series of people from his past. He thought he could cut himself off on his island. As he realizes he can't, he finds the allure of companionship attractive, but struggles to manage these new relationships.

This is a devastatingly honest and keenly personal novel. It ranks with Norwegian Per Petterson's "Out Stealing Horses" for its marvelous portrayal of withdrawal from society--and its consequences. Mankell writes with a measured pace that's in tune with the frozen weather and the slow body of the aging Fredrik.

Though "Italian Shoes" is a departure for Mankell, he examines a topic common to crime novels--death. But he reverses the crime novel's way of looking at death. He's not concerned here with how death occurs. Rather he wants to understand why anyone should care whether they live or die.

Crime writers create a violent death, to show how the remaining characters experience life in extreme circumstances. Here Mankell depicts a man who essentially stopped living and who rediscovers life when faced with the impending death of Harriet.

"Before I die," Fredrik says, "I must know why I've lived." In his dour, bitter way, Mankell has the answer.

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Not a mystery, Mankell fans! A very good, yet profoundly sad, novel about a man who has isolated himself against the world as much as possible over the past 12 years. The sudden, unexpected appearance of an old lover--the main love of his life, in fact--sets the narrator on a path that forces him to confront his past and himself. Often painful to read--the mistakes, the aversions, the lies, and betrayals common to every life--"Italian Shoes" nonetheless makes the case that it's never too late (the narrator is 66 years old) to atone for one's errors--however embarrassing and discomforting that may be. Only one shocking, unexpected act about 50 or 60 pages before the novel's end felt wrong, felt like a puzzling misstep on Mankell's part. But apart from that, for years Mankell's mysteries have transcended the genre; with "Italian Shoes" he goes headlong into "straight" fiction, albeit with the same fascination in characters troubled and intimidated by intimacy, yet in deep need of connection with others.

This standalone (of course it isn't a Wallander mystery) is a sad story and probably an allegory on what the author believes to be the deterioration of Swedish society and culture as well as the world's attitude toward the environment. While such a negative view is predominant, he does hold out some glimmer of hope.

Basically, the novel is the story of Frederick Welin, son of a "lowly" waiter who was able to rise in status through college and medical school and become a surgeon. While a young man, he had a torrid affair with a young woman who he abandoned without explanation. Years later, an error during an operation led to an official reprimand, a decision he could not accept, so he fundamentally quit life retiring to an island offshore where he lived with only a dog and a cat for company. Lethargy ruled his days, exemplified by a growing anthill in his living room, ignored by him as it slowly took over the area.

Then one day, after 11 years on the island, now 66, his former lover is seen standing on the ice, leaning on a walker. She's dying of cancer but forces him to face up to the present (and hopefully the future).

Written by a masterful writer, this is a tale of redemption and renewal. The use of Italian shoes as a symbol of what can be accomplished by painstaking craftsmanship gives rise to optimism in an otherwise sad but poignant tale. Recommended.

I found myself deeply moved by "Italian Shoes". This is about a man who's unconsciously allowed his life to pass by and to have lost all opportunity at connection. He reflects on nothing. All blame is for others or explained and excused. His world is purely physical; walk; feed a pet, record the weather in a diary, repeat.

I would call it a "man-story"- the proto-man from Mars. It's a story about a man with such arrested development that his EQ is negative.

"You've never been a good person", she said. "You've always shrugged off your responsibilities". Fredrik Welin is a 66 year old former surgeon, now living almost as a hermit in a house inherited from his grandparents on a remote island. He is as emotionally remote as he is physically. He couldn't express his feelings even if he had any. He's created a routine of blithe diary entries, minimal care for an old dog and cat sprinkled with empty, superficial chatter with the mail man. It's a path of least resistance for a man who doesn't make choices or decisions but rather apathetically floats into a rudderless existence; aloof, spare, empty, unchallenged, detached and spiritless.

Then one day his past comes back with a visitor at his doorstep. He's reminded of prior misdeeds. He's not a criminal per se but a man that just didn't care and if that's had consequences than it's for others not Fredrik. All his success at suppressing his thoughts and compartmentalizing events, now fails him. He is slowly, agonizingly, coming to terms with the cost of missed opportunities. He is gripped with regret and knows his simplistic routines have ended but what comes next may not be up to him.

"I didn't want to be the man that had to jump down into freezing cold water everyday, in order to confirm he was still alive" Fredrik thought. Repeatedly he acknowledges the pain and regret of the dead soul he's created inside himself.

Fredrik's humanity will only return through an ugly and circuitous path. His past means dealing with people, taking an interest in others and expressing real empathy. With so many bad habits built up over the years it's not clear that he's going to succeed. I found myself easily turning the pages and wanting to know where this was going. Mankell's writing is spare but so spot on. I underlined no less that 15 phrases that struck me as so clear that I wanted to go back and re-read them.

The story has characters that are chillingly real to me. Fredrik's self imposed exile is so much more emotional than physical. Anyone can shut down while still going through the motions of a work and life. Fredrik's circumstances in that sense are no different or less likely than anyone else. Mankell could have chosen easier endings on at least two occasions and chose not to bringing some honesty to the ultimate conclusion.

I am not sure if it will have the same impact on other readers. For me it was a beautiful story, wonderfully told with a potent reminder that your life choices are your own.

This elegant novel is the best Mankell I have read. The story is interesting, but the quality of composition and the beautiful prose make this a must read. This is my sixth Mankell book and certainly not my last. If you are looking for a mystery, this is not your book. If you are looking for a touching story of and old man and his life past and present; it is amongst the best.

This is a perfect book. It's about life. It's about mistakes, learning from mistakes, and all this perspective comes from an author who doesn't live and work in the United States. This book is about another culture. This is a book to be read by anyone over 55 years old. Sure, a younger person can read this book -- however; someone who has experienced life will relate to the emotions and personalities.

... occupy the thoughts of 66-year-old Fredrik Welin, a doctor who made a tragic error in a surgery 12 years ago and who has isolated himself on a small outer island of the Stockholm archipelago to punish himself as sorely as a medieval hermit but without a medieval hope of redemption. His only companions on the island, inherited from his grandparents, are an old dog and an older cat, both of them brutely sensing the approach of death, as is Welin himself:

""Every morning when i woke up, i could feel the aches and pains of approaching old age manifesting themselves. I sometimes worried that I could no longer pee as forcefully as I used to be capable of. There was something especially humiliating about the thought of imminent death because I could no longer pee properly. I found it hard to accept that the ancient Greek philosophers or Roman emperors die of prostate cancer. Even if they did, of course.""

Deaths will occur in this bleak but strangely tranquil novel, but not Welin's, and that's all I want to disclose of the narrative. Lies and abandonments are the driving events. The tranquillity comes from the sea and the seasons which enclose Welin's isolation. In other words, this is an artfully 'atmospheric' novel, in which the quirky characters and their fierce passions are steadily obliterated by the somber indifference of nature. And the characters are indeed fierce and quirky -- bizarre even -- but in the long run impressively believable and memorable. Welin's discovery of himself, of the futility of his lies and avoidances, is the core of the novel. Don't expect that awakening to be a trite acceptance of self or an epiphany of bliss. The events that intrude into Welin's sealed-off life serve mostly to beat into his head what a sorry sordid self-involved blighter he's been. I think I've discovered a "principle' in this novel, something to the effect that 'good people know how they're not good enough while bad people don't know how bad they are.' Welin's progress in this novel is from the latter to the former, from a person who couldn't feel responsibility for his 'sins' and blunders to a person who knows he's not entitled to forgiveness yet learns to forgive those whom he's hurt.

That's a little dicey, isn't it? But I don't want to clarify it, lest I impose my rationalism on this forcefully emotional story.

Author Henning Mankell is Sweden's most popular writer of mystery novels; his "Kurt Wallander" series includes a dozen international best-sellers. "Italian Shoes" is a bold departure from his successful formula, and readers who expect another clever mystery will likely be mystified by it. More than just a psychological depiction of an old man's bifurcation of despair and hope, Italian Shoes is also a doubtful evaluation of modern Swedish society, of a culture that the author perceives to be in moral crisis. The young woman Agnes, one of those from whom Welin craves both condemnation and forgiveness, tells him:

""Thirty-three [years old] isn't much at all. But it's enough to realize that there has never been so much tension in this land of ours as there is today. But nobody seems to have noticed. At least, none of the people you might think ought to have their fingers on the pulse. There's an invisible network of walls in Sweden, and it's getting worse by the day -- dividing people up, increasing the distance between them. Superficially, the opposite might seem to be the case. get on a train in Stockholm and go to the suburbs. It's not very far in terms of miles, but nevertheless the distance is enormous. It's rubbish to talk about entering another world. It's the same world. But every station on the way out from the city centre is another wall..... what you think is the periphery is in fact the center, and it's slowly recreating Sweden. The country is slowly rotating, and outer and inner, near and far, center and outskirts are changing...""

What Agnes is trying to express is a sense of anomie so bitter that isolation seems to offer relief from alienation. Whether Swedish society is more advanced in dehumanizing anomie than European or American society is a question you'll probably want to ask yourself as you read this thoughtful fiction.

Don't expect a flurry of fancy writing in "Italianska Skor". Henning Mankell is not an innovative avant-garde stylist in Swedish. His prose is simple, solid, yet supple, just as you'd expect from the author of a dozen crime novels. Such Swedish is easily translated into English. The depths of this book are more human than literary.

Frederick Welin is a former surgeon who made a terrible mistake on the operating table. He retired from the world and when the book opens he has been living in isolation on a small Swedish island for 12 years. One day, unexpectedly, a woman arrives to see him. Harriet is a former lover whom he abruptly abandoned almost 40 years ago. Now terminally ill, she wants him to take her to a lake that he had told her about many years ago. However, it emerges that she has another motive for visiting him - one that will prove to be the catalyst for major changes in his life. Over the course of the book, he realizes "that everything (he'd) thought was definite and done with was starting to change".

If this sounds dry, I can only say that it's utterly absorbing. Mankell has a lovely, spare writing style reminiscent of Helen Garner. This is a beautifully written book that is quintessentially Swedish. The characters are rounded and perfectly realized, right down to the hypochondriac postman. Also, the Swedish countryside is almost like another character, adding so much to the novel.

I did feel that this is a novel that always keeps the reader at a slight distance. I empathized with Welin but I never particularly liked him (everytime I did start to like him he'd do something very self-centered or unpleasant). However this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the novel. The best way that I can think of to explain it is to say that reading this book is like watching a very satisfying piece of theater.

I wanted to explore some Swedish fiction and was directd to Mankell. I had no expectations when I started The Italian Shoes. Other reviewers outline the story very well so I won't repeat that here.

I found the main character in the book very unappealing. It's hard to like him. He's an old slob of a man with little personality and little charm. However I am heartened by the fact he decides to get hs life together somewhat.

What could have been a tedious exercise of introspection is saved by the pace of the book. Mankell does not allow his characters to indulge in lengthy bouts of self examination, and for this I am grateful. The book strides along at a pace that compels one to continue reading - at times I would say it's almost too quick. Some scenes could have been fleshed out a little more. The arrival of the main character and Harriet at the pool in the forest was somewhat anticlimactic, I felt that Mankell could have done more with that setting.

Overall, this is a reasonable book worthy of reading. The pace and length of the book makes it a short diversion - most people should be able to finish it in a few days.

"It's black, they say it's bottomless, and there's no shore.... I've told you that I watched my father swimming there. But what I didn't say was that the experience made me realise what life was all about. People are close to each other so that they can be parted. That's all there is to it."

Fredrik Welin was a man who equated parting to abandonment. To avoid being abandoned, he had taken departures without saying goodbye - being the one who walked away first was a lot more livable. The cost of such a life for himself was hard to gauge, in spite of the great pain in the ones he left behind. Without much effort, he took the role as the black creature that lived beneath the forest black pond, choosing loneliness is easier than to be left lonely.

Harriet brought along her own "spirits" with her, a woman who loved him like no other in the world would. But the night after she was told how, forty years ago, he decisively planned to leave one day earlier than he had lead her to believe, he saw her, in the middle of the night, crawling on the floor to reach the last of her spirits in the bathroom. Her spirits almost depleted, psychologically and physically, yet she stood up again on her way back. The following day from more rest and replenishment, Harriet assumed again to guide him, and herself, to the next destination, only this time she was the one who would part first.

I find this splendid book filled with symbols that gestured and drew me in, a plainly written book of large meanings and not so simple thoughts.