The Unseen

February 1, 2020
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway's rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid's adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her "la-di-da" ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she'll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family's hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men's and women's roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises--a war, Sweden's financial troubles--have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature's rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator's decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation--i.e., "Tha's goen' nohvar" for "You're going nowhere")--slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants. A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

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April 27, 2020
Jacobsen’s solemn, lyrical portrait of agrarian life (after Borders), the first in a trilogy, is set on the fictional remote Norwegian island of Barrøy in the early 20th century, with the Barrøy family its sole occupants. Jacobsen guides readers through the lives of Hans Barrøy; his widowed father, Martin; unmarried younger sister, Barbro; wife, Maria; and three-year-old daughter, Ingrid, detailing the everyday toil of fishing, farming, and figuring out the next move to keep themselves afloat, as they increasingly depend on the mainland’s market for their goods. Jacobsen alternates from rich descriptions of the landscape and the family’s daily tasks to passages contrasting Barrøy with the mainland, first established in a scene with a visit from Pastor Johannes Malmberget, who comes to consult with Hans Barrøy about his daughter Ingrid’s upcoming christening, and harbors bewilderment about the isolated family’s outlook and way of life (the epigraph on Hans’s mother’s headstone “seems to proclaim that life is not worth living”). After the death of Martin and then Hans, the younger generation struggles to keep up with the demands of the Barrøy way of life. Shaw and Bartlett brilliantly capture Jacobsen’s saga in precise prose that offers a window into each character’s point of view. This moving meditation on a family’s tenuous relationship with the natural world is worth a look.