Adrift in a self-indulgent Danish-Time and Danish-Space
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After reading the excellent "Miss Smilla" and the so-so "Borderliners", I then picked up this work hoping for further inspiration and cause for thought. The opening chapter is a real tour de force in its moulding of space and time, and I considered that this might be one of those rare events: a veritable five-star novel. I read on, but the closer the story came to the present day, the less interesting became the lives protrayed, so that post-war life becomes so ordinary in its extraordinariness. And this is, I suppose, one of the book's strengths and a clear indication that we have here an author of real perspicacity. It is also true that, the closer one comes to the present, the more comical are the situations and the ideas, though it should be said that the humour is subtle, darkly subtle.
So why only three stars? Because, despite the black humour, despite the clever insights, despite the vitriolic (and yet sympathetic) comment - both direct and indirect - on the state of contemporary Danish society, the method of narration is so tedious. The storyline maybe so fantastic and yet equally so everyday, but the tale is nevertheless a family saga: it can only indulge its readers by assuming they are at bottom actually interested in the minutiae of such a saga writ large. And, I'm afraid, often I simply could not care less.
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From the cover............
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Denmark is the centre of the world. Or, more precisely, the centre of the world is located on the estate of the Count of Mørkhøj, at a spot on the edge of the coach-house midden. Around his estate, the Count has built a wall. He has stopped all the clocks so that time should simply go away and the entire household may live forever -- until two hundred years later the 20th century makes its violent entry. Meanwhile there are clocks everywhere, even down to the smallest room, in the Teander household, which is governed with a rod of iron by the Grandmother, an illiterate woman who has founded the nation's most influential newspaper, and who makes the news happen simply by dictating it in advance to her secretary. The Count of Mørkhøj and Grandmother Teander are only two of the eccentric characters that people this lively, brilliantly coloured novel that discloses, in the histories of four families and the young who grow up in them, how the twentieth century is brought to birth and develops in Denmark. A story to be read on many levels, it is a highly sophisticated parable of contemporary entrepreneurial society and the vices it engenders. A young writer who could as his first novel produce a work as perceptive, intelligent and well written as this was bound to make his mark: Peter Høeg has since become an international celebrity.
TÃLÃRAMA:"This witty family saga replete with love and folly is proof enough that this young Dane belongs to a great family of Scandinavian narrators. In exploring the past of a country whose ideas have sometimes veered towards the nightmarish, he reminds us that dreams may also stir the conscience."
LeMONDE:"Peter Høeg's ever-fertile imagination seems to have digested every childhood tale; he brings an impish fantasy to the task of recording the history of four families, taken from the highest to the lowest on the social scale. One of the best foreign novels published this year."
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a dazzling journey through interwoven lives
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Peter Hoeg has put together a masterful tale that at times is difficult to read, but if you stick with it you will be rewarded. Generally it sweeps along at a good pace, picking up characters at the point where others are dropped off and relating these characters in a very detailed and sensitive manner.
the quirkiness is in common with hoegs other books and if you enjoy them you will enjoy this.
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