The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland

August 20, 2018
Norwegian novelist Houm’s austerely wrenching and darkly comic novel, his first to be published in English, is assembled out of jagged pieces that gradually cohere to reveal a heartbreaking picture. The reader first meets Jane Ashland as she lies on her back in an icy Norwegian mist, contemplating the prospect of freezing to death. The story then leaps to her flight to Norway from her home in Wisconsin, during which she meets an attractive, self-assured, and occasionally irritating zoologist named Ulf, who studies musk oxen. Bit by bit, the reader is introduced to Jane’s uncommunicative parents, her enthusiastic psychiatrist, and the events that have led her to flee Wisconsin, where she has a disastrous encounter with some distant relatives and takes off into the wilderness with Ulf. The excitement of the first pages of the novel wears off as the shape of a predictable narrative emerges from the initial flurry of hints and clues. Even so, Houm maintains the momentum of the spare novel, in which new mysteries constantly emerge as old ones are resolved. Not so much a conventional thriller as a psychological study of the reverberations of trauma, its impact deepens even as its suspense lessens, resulting in a winning novel.

September 1, 2018
After a tragic accident--something that's alluded to early in the book but not explained until later--Jane Ashland's whole life begins to feel like it is spiraling out of control.Jane's job as a professor of creative writing is no longer fulfilling, and she no longer has the patience to deal with academic wrangling, planning lectures, or grading papers. Similarly, despite having published several well-reviewed novels, she can no longer motivate herself to write. What's the point? she wonders. The only thing that gives her even a modicum of pleasure is genealogy, and she has begun to compulsively research her family's European ancestry. Over time, this passion builds to obsession, and Jane impulsively quits her job, sells her car, and moves out of her apartment. The plan, she tells her parents and colleagues, is to travel to Norway, meet a distant cousin she has never laid eyes on, and learn as much as she can about her family's origins. But even before Jane arrives in Norway, things go awry. First, there's her airline seat companion, Ulf, a zoologist who befriends her without knowing anything whatsoever about her circumstances. Later, when tensions with cousin Lars Christian's family explode--she has told them nothing about the reason she gave up everything and landed on their doorstep, so they have no way to interpret her bizarre behavior--she tracks Ulf down and accompanies him to the mountains, where he is monitoring herds of musk ox. As the encounter unfolds, the reason Jane is so bereft is unveiled, and readers are made privy, in fits and starts, to her backstory. Told in a nonlinear fashion, the novel presents incidents in short spurts, with Jane's memories colliding in a jumble of recollections. The end result is gut-wrenching. And while the storyline and denouement are somewhat depressing, they can also be interpreted as an explication of deeply felt, raw emotion.This resonant book is both provocative and gripping.

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November 15, 2018

Jane Ashland, a Wisconsin writer and college professor, has had a happy and successful life with a husband and daughter and a novel that sold well, until a traffic accident that kills her family throws her into a state of unalloyed and inconsolable grief. Devastated and suffering from a major writer's block, she gradually sinks beneath the weight of her overwhelming anguish. Unable to assuage her sorrow, despite trying everything from therapy to alcohol and pain killers, Jane becomes obsessed with genealogy, selling many of her possessions and taking off on a trip to Norway to meet her distant relatives. In her precarious mental state, she soon falls out with them and joins a Norwegian zoologist she met on the plane for a fateful trip to the stark landscape of the Dovrefjell mountains to view the musk oxen. Alternating chapters between Jane's past and present, Houm presents the story in a jaggedly episodic manner that both reflects Jane's shattered consciousness and keeps readers off-balance and engaged. VERDICT In his English-language debut, Norwegian author Houm crafts an engrossing novel that's as dark as an Ibsen play and as emotionally harrowing as a Bergman film.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

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