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Egholm tells an interesting and hard story
Book Review
By Derryll White
Egholm, Elsebeth (2013). Three Dog Night.
I have been really surprised and pleased by Danish writers such as Peter Hoeg and Jussi Adler Olsen. But I haven’t read a female Danish writer since Karen Blixen, so I was pleased to get hold of this new work by Elsebeth Egholm.
Egholm is good at picking up local detail and infusing the story with it. The reader quickly accepts that everything is happening in rural Denmark, and that it is different from Canada, although just as cold.
The novel starts slowly, giving lots of detail on life in rural Denmark and presenting lots of characters. A third of the way in the characters have become well-formed, but the reader is still left wondering what the real question at the centre of the novel is – treasure? Love? Revenge? And just then the story takes an unseen twist, with very capable, determined and rough women laying out two motorcycle gang members who are abusing a third woman. What gives here?
There are many broken lives in this novel – suppressed memories, dysfunctional families, abused prostitutes, terminally ill people. But there is also strength and personal development, growth and even, dare I say, love. The novel is long and dark, even set in winter as the lives of the people of most northern countries are.
One of the Nordic themes represented here is the independence and strength of women. It fascinates me that Elsebeth Egholm has enough surety in her gender and place in society that she can make women villains – killers and all-around bad asses. It is not something that happens much in North American fiction.
I enjoyed this novel. It had some slow spots but overall Egholm told an interesting and hard story. I also enjoyed the fact that she didn’t feel compelled to wrap it all up with a pretty bow at the end. It wasn’t that kind of a story – more about belief and will and trust of the future.
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Excerpts from the novel:
NORDIC HABIT – …as was his wont, dragged a mattress onto the balcony and went to sleep with the dog snuggled up against the Arctic sleeping bag, burying its nose in a lambskin fleece. He could have done with a couple of extra dogs tonight, he thought, his teeth chattering from the cold. Aboriginal Australians used tame dingoes to keep warm on cold nights: a dog on each side and – if it was really cold, like tonight – a third on top. The first night of the New Year was one of those: a three-dog night.
MEMORY – “I decided to retreat to this place. The past was the past. So when I found Ramses’s body, my first instinct was to deny I knew him. He was everything I didn’t want to be confronted with.”
Peter leaned forward.
“Some people call it living on the margins of life. I think you need to have been there to know what it means.”
ASSUMPTIONS – The doctor looked at her and Peter saw what he saw: an unkempt mountain of blubber, indicating excessive intake of fat and sugar and hence – the doctor might have erroneously concluded – stupidity. Perhaps he lumped her and Stinger together: patients whose illnesses were self-inflicted to the point where treating them was a matter of debate. If he had examined their circumstances more closely, he would also have discovered that they were both on benefits and consequently not making a contribution to Denmark’s gross national product.
CHOICE – And yet there was no bitterness or hatred to be found in his voice and she wondered how anyone could have survived something like that.
“It’s a choice,” he said in response. “You can choose not to hate, not to want revenge. I made the choice, but it took me time.”
READING – At school, a teacher had encouraged him to read. Sebastian Warming was his name and he had a big black beard. One day he had put Robinson Crusoe into Peter’s hand and told him it was a story about survival against all odds. After that he had Treasure Island, then Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and other stories about boys or men who overcame life’s trials and tribulations. This was how books had become an indispensable part of his life.
DANCE – All he could do was devour her with his eyes until the music subsided and she collapsed like a rose under the weight of rain water. Tired. But without the anger and fear that had recently consumed her.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org
