The Ferryman and His Wife
by Frode Grytten
Alison McCullough (Translator)
In the spirit of Amor Towles and George Saunders, the renowned, bestselling Norwegian author Frode Grytten takes readers on a quietly epic ferry driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord, on what he knows will be his last day alive.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
The old furniture was heavy and dark, as if it would stand here for all time. Three generations had passed through these rooms, fluttering around like insects, filling each floor with the sounds of life and joy.
Yes– it’s perfectly possible to see whether or not a man is happily married. I can see it a mile off. But no man with love in his life can understand how hard it is to be without it, and no happy person can truly grasp just how unhappy another might be.
So how did you die? he asks. Of dehydration, she replies. Dehydration? Yes– didn’t you know that women who live alone shrivel up? I don’t know how it is for men, but a woman gets dehydrated if she spends her life alone. You weren’t happy, then? Happy? Only mediocre people are happy.
Oh, the idiocy of having to depend on others, she said.
In his logbook, he wrote of his passenger: Beautiful people expect so much more from life than life is willing to give them.
It was the first time Nils had ever seen a dead man. He’d thought it would be more dramatic– Gerhard Myklebust looked peaceful, the life had simply trickled out of him, as if his fuel tank had run empty.
My Review:
I found this piece to be brain-rattling, confusing, haunting, heart-squeezing, brilliant, perceptive, and profoundly written. I adored it and was riveted and itchy with curiosity throughout perusal. I couldn’t settle or decide if he was hallucinating, dreaming, or in the process of dying. I alternated between deep emotions as I read with passages that occasionally made me smirk but also broke my heart before putting it back in place. Frode Grytten has mad skills and seriously powerful word voodoo.
Frode Grytten (born December 11, 1960, in Odda) is a Norwegian writer and journalist. He is the author of the Brage award-winning novel Bikubesong (‘Song of the Beehive’), and other collections of short stories and poetry. His works have been translated into Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, Albanian, Croatian, and Chinese.
Grytten is a native of the industrial town of Odda, which often features in his work.
As a journalist, he has mainly worked for Bergens Tidende, the local newspaper of Bergen, Norway. He is also writing for the Oslo-based national newspaper Dagbladet.