Cursed be he who moves the marker stones between himself and his neighbor! A quote from the Old Testament’s fifth book of mosses opens Silje Bekeng-Flemmen’s second novel. In “Inn i vårt mørke hus” the Education Agency in Oslo has decided to move the school boundaries. Thus it is likely that the daughter of Alice and Kim will not start at Åsgård school, which scores highly in all contexts. Scary Lucia The alternative is a school with children who live in a block over there on the other side “of the bridge”. There are children who do not have parents who have inherited large houses with gardens, and who tend to have slightly darker skin. Then the mother in the house stops being liberal and for diversity. The father in the house finds himself together with dubious buddies from growing up, and from there things go downhill at breakneck speed. The air is thick with secrets, and things aren’t going well with the kids either. Under the surface, prejudices and social tensions simmer, which the novel underlines from the outset. Even the snow has something ominous about it. Lucia celebration, which in this country is a sugary event with morning-tired schoolchildren wearing white sheets, is being returned to its pagan roots. It’s not subtle. The main message is: There is nothing good about Det Norske Hus. It keeps boiling over. Today’s Norway has become a society of inequality, with far too great differences. Reconciliation is no longer possible. Racism simmers beneath the surface. When people are done beating each other to death over these school boundaries, well, they’re going to beat each other up over densification policies and single-family housing plans instead. American conditions In terms of form, the novel is based on the same reading as the novels of the American author Jonathan Franzen. What we can call Franzen’s formula for success consists in taking us into a family where we get to know each one of them in turn. The secrets of the past are gradually revealed. There is something Ibsen about this. What Bekeng-Flemmen currently lacks is a narrative agency that balances out the sour, the salty and the spicy with, for lack of a better word, let’s call it the beautiful. This year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature would perhaps call it “the shining darkness”. A form of laughter or irony, which forms as a realization in the reader after getting to know all these people. A forgiving indulgence is needed to balance out the pessimism. Few keys Silje Bekeng Flemmen is obviously at home in the residential suburbs she portrays. The novel is at its best in those moments when it sort of forgets to be a dark suspense novel, and instead shows the feeling of life in this special area of the capital, in the borderland between forest and city: In such sequences I see the contours of a supporting narrative voice that is otherwise missing. Otherwise, the tone here is consistently too one-dimensional. Everything seems to go in the same vein. Or minor. Several tones are needed for the sharp social criticism to be translated into good novels. The potential is there. Writers who dare to make clear social diagnoses are needed. news reviewer Photo: gyldendal Title: “Inn i vårt mørke hus” Author: Silje Bekeng-Flemmen Category: Novel Number of pages: 288 Publisher: Gyldendal Published: 2023 ISBN: 9788205592216 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“Into our dark house” by Silje Bekeng-Flemmen – Reviews and recommendations
