Review: Dark and suggestive from primitive Norway: Book review: Helga Flatland: “Etterklang” – VG
In her new novel “Etterklang”, Helga Flatland (38) takes the reader to the original Norwegian – and all the darkness it has to offer.
Helga Flatland has established herself as a very popular contemporary author, and is particularly known for her depictions of interpersonal relationships.
Her previous novel “Et liv forbi” got a roll of five here in VG in 2020. In “Etterklang” Flatland travels back to its own, nationally romantic roots.
But behind all the lovely mountain scenery and felt tones – how romantic is it really, over there in the valley?
In a village in Telemark, Johs and his brother run the family farm they have inherited from their parents, who still live on the same farm. The main house is filled to the brim with rose-painted cabinets, crown beds, heirloom silver, and multiple generations of family portraits adorn the walls.
We are in primitive Norway, in a village that I would guess reminds a lot of writer Helga Flatland’s own hometown, Flatdal.
In Oslo sits Mathilde, a substitute teacher who has just been fired after starting a relationship with the 18-year-old student Jakob. The coronavirus is spreading, and as Oslo becomes too dead and suffocating, the incident has to move to something “real”. And so she ends up in the yard of Johs and his family.
The book alternates between Mathilde’s and Johs’ perspective.
The two are apparently like night and day, an impression that is reinforced by the fact that Johs’ parts are written in Nynorsk.
Mathilde’s initial obsession with Jakob and their extreme inappropriateness, as well as her fascinatingly absent will to accept that it was just that, could almost have been action enough.
But “Etterklang” offers far more layers than one first gets the impression.
Flatland addresses topics such as loneliness, anxiety, longing, complicated family relationships, neglect and village dynamics.
She also dives into a cultural heritage with increasingly clear misogynist undertones.
Mathilde is a source of unrest wherever she goes, and Flatland masterfully portrays how she unravels the ingrained, dysfunctional dynamics on the farm.
also read
Flatland’s previous novel: Strong about a dying mother
In her sixth novel, Helga Flatland (36) writes honestly and convincingly about neglect and obligations between parents…
But at the same time there will be quite a lot of jumps – quite a lot of people, destinies and perspectives we will enter the yard. It is certainly intentional on the part of the author, but when she constantly opens storylines to supporting characters, it becomes a little frustrating for the reader not to find out more about what has really befallen them.
While Mathilde has both an irritating and provocative (but sometimes oh so recognisable) reaction pattern, there is no character more extreme than grandfather Johannes, who even after his death is an omnipresent figure on the farm.
We meet him in flashbacks, where he torments his wife, children and grandchildren, drinks freely and dominates everything and everyone.
At the same time, he enjoys the admiration of his surroundings – because Johannes was in his lifetime the greatest Harding fiddle player in the county.
In the flashbacks, the fiddler tells several gloomy haystacks before he starts to play, and the strings gradually build an increasingly bleak framework for the present-day story. These flashbacks are powerful effects, and tell so much that the subtitle almost becomes like a third voice that weaves into the narrative.
In a somewhat frantic, but by all means impressive way, the author lands the threads like a kind of landslide on the tampon.
And the book’s title is, on the whole, particularly descriptive of how it feels to flip through the suggestive last pages – it actually rings in your head long after you’ve finished reading.
Reviewed by: Oda Faremo Lindholm