Across the China Sea

July 17, 2017
Norwegian author Heivoll (Before I Burn) peers into the life of a family committed to caring for others with the “christlike spirit of love” in this poignant, haunting novel. After moving from Oslo to a small village in southern Norway at the end of the German occupation, the nameless family with a small boy build a home with rooms for war victims they plan to care for, including three psychologically unstable men and “the crazies from Stavanger,” five siblings whose parents are not able to care for them. Many years later, the only son returns to the house after both of his parents have passed away. As he cleans and sifts through objects from his childhood, he recalls the German occupation, the tragic death of his sister, and the profound but inexplicable bonds of his unconventional family. While the language is spare and at times restrained, Heivoll’s book is deeply affecting. This is a striking and exquisitely detailed novel exploring the depths of compassion, cognizance, and mutual understanding amidst a household of adults and children who cannot always communicate in traditional ways.

July 1, 2017
Entering his sixth decade, a faithful son recounts a decidedly unusual childhood.It is gone now, disappeared somewhere along the way, the orange crate that crossed the China Sea on a freighter and wound up in an asylum in Norway. Recalls the narrator of events of half a century past, "Papa had found the crate in the attic above the men's unit, along with old sedan chairs, straitjacket beds, and other paraphernalia from the past." Our narrator slept in the crate as a baby; in a dream, his dead sister floats in it across the water, "holding white carnations," and now it is gone, as are all the years gone by. Heivoll (Before I Burn, 2014) takes a Proustian view of the passage of time mixed with a solemnity befitting Ingmar Bergman, though he writes economically and with characters of a kind that do not often figure in storytelling: the mentally disabled, eight of whom are the charges of the narrator's parents, churchly people with great reservoirs of empathy. Tracing this history to the last days of the Nazi occupation of Norway, Heivoll revisits tiny, rare moments of happiness ("I shivered and splashed with my hands, water sprayed up around us; sunbeams glistened in the drops and we laughed and laughed, and there was nothing but our laughter to be heard"), moments that produce nothing but wistfulness in those who partake in recalling them. His characters have a tragic grace, such as one, a promising poet whose mother burned his manuscript, another a voracious reader and gifted singer; all are fully fleshed, if not suited to the world, as when two sisters, having inherited a small sum, fail to comprehend how a bank account works. This is a story built on vignettes and small episodes; not much happens, but the brush strokes quickly make an elegant portrait. Humane and lovely; reminiscent of Paul Harding's Tinkers in its sympathetic understanding of mental disability and the power of memory.

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September 1, 2017

This quietly affecting novel from award-winning Norwegian author Heivoll (Before I Burn) opens in 1994 with the narrator sorting through his parents' belongings--a common enough act but in this case revelatory of an unexpected story. At the end of World War II, when he was a boy, his parents moved from Oslo to Norway's rural south to open a home for mentally disabled individuals who could not care for themselves--three adults, including Mama's brother Josef, and five children rescued from utter squalor. It's an imperfect paradise; neighbors are suspicious of the disabled youth--a bus driver suggests they need leashes--and a trip to the city to sterilize the two oldest children unsettles. Still, this is a real family, sustained by warmth and caring. Then a terrible accident takes Tone, Mama leaves (at least temporarily), and as we learn some surprising truths about Tone, the narrator forges bonds with his other siblings. In the end, these ties hold, and the book culminates on a radiant note, lifted by the music the family loves. VERDICT Too few books address the plight of the mentally disabled, and Heivoll handles his assignment with grace. Good lessons on family for all readers.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
In occupied Norway, a mother, father, their young son, and his sister leave Oslo for a newly built residence in a rural village, a place where the parents hope to realize their ambition of caring for the mentally disabled in a Christlike spirit of love. Their patients, all unstable to varying degrees, are an uncle, two grown men, and the five Olsen children, rescued by social services from appalling conditions. Cleaning out the house after his parents' death in the 1990s, the son remembers his life there with these residents through a first-person narrative. Emotion is seldom stated outright; Heivoll (Before I Burn, 2014) is so skilled that there is no needactions speak for themselves. This is an intensely moving work, the characters drawn with such depth that when overwhelming tragedy strikes or the inexorable cruelty of time makes itself felt, grief is palpable. While bittersweet, this is primarily a story of kindness, of imperfect people who are good at heart making a safe place in an otherwise unsympathetic world for those less fortunate than themselves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)