Lisa Ridzén’s debut, which has been a runaway success in her Swedish homeland and elsewhere, demonstrates how sometimes the simplest storytelling can be the most effective. This is a novel with no clever structural devices or burden of symbolism and a setting so limited geographically that the reader ends up knowing precisely where everything is.
It is narrated by Bo, a former timbermill worker who has reached the age when people worry about him, and has a network of carers calling in three times a day. One of Ridzén’s inspirations was the team journal kept by the carers looking after her dying grandfather; very movingly, bulletins from the journal of Bo’s carers punctuate his narrative, the alternative perspective like a chill breeze through a briefly opened door.
Bo lives in the Swedish far north, surrounded by the sort of woods, lakes and meadows that are a paradise for dogs but a constant worry for the adult children of old men who persist in living somewhere so remote. His adored wife, Frederika, no longer knows who he is and has been taken away to a dementia care home, imposing on Bo a kind of living bereavement. His one close friend, Ture, a man local gossips have down as a “confirmed bachelor”, has also reached the stage of being cared for around the clock, but the two old men enjoy regular catch-ups on their geriatric-friendly mobiles. His other great love is a dog, Sixten, an elkhound who needs far more exercise than Bo can now possibly give him, but is a constant presence at his side or on his bed. Bo also has a fiftysomething son called Hans, a divorced conservative and worrier, and a student granddaughter, Ellinor.
The plot, such as it is, involves Bo becoming ever frailer and Hans threatening to have Sixten rehomed, now that walking a dog in rugged terrain has become too perilous for a man prone to falling over. However, almost from the first page, Bo’s first-person, present-tense narrative is enriched by repeated dreamlike digressions. These take us out of the grim present realities of adult nappies, phlegm cups and frozen ready meals into stories of a country boyhood overshadowed by a cruel and brutal father, the happy marriage into which young Bo escaped, the adorable little boy Hans was before he somehow turned into an overweight, fretful bully, and Bo’s long friendship and regular fishing trips with the ambiguous Ture.
Bo is haunted by a peculiarly male anger – the scarring, remembered rages of his father and his own bursts of rage at his increasing lack of independence that somehow stops him telling Hans what he really feels. As Bo’s end draws near, he faces the twin challenges of keeping his beloved Sixten at his side and overcoming his masculine conditioning so as not to die with love unexpressed.
Another element, hinted at in the title, is the steady parade of seasonal changes all about his little house, as the year moves from the glories of May, through the pale nights of midsummer, to golden autumn and the arrival of bitter cold. The sense of place is conjured deftly – Ridzén is describing the landscape on her doorstep near Östersund – but just as evocative are the many mentions of Swedish food, from the tinned fishballs and microwaved stew served by the carers, which are evidently inferior to the fiskbullar and lingonberry-enhanced roasts once made by Frederika, to the superior almond tarts, or mazariner, served by Ture, all of which had me googling recipes to try at home.
At a couple of slightly awkward points, translator Alice Menzies has the characters talk a northern English, presumably as an equivalent for northern Swedish dialect, but there was really no need. Anyone anywhere who has worried for a crumbling parent, or worried about the crumble in themselves, or simply worried that their dog understood them better than their family, will identify with Ridzén’s novel and take it to heart.
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale (Headline Publishing Group, £10.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies, is published by Doubleday, £14.99. To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
