Put another way: Lars Ramslie is writing towards his very best when he is now out with a new novel after seven years. That’s not saying much. It turns out that the author here returns to the beginning, to “Biopsi” (1997), for which he most deservedly received Vesaas’ debut prize. There we met a father in a wheelchair and a teenage son who is drawn into the self-destructive father’s bitter evening of life. This time the author goes further back in the story of a father and a son. Lars Einar (9) is with his father at his childhood home, which is a farm by a fjord in western Norway, probably in Sogn, a town. A summer holiday where a child will be with a divorced father whom he rarely sees can be demanding enough. But there is more at stake here. The foundation itself is cracking. Between the debut and “The mountain, the gun, the water”, Ramslie has introduced us to memorable characters such as “Fatso”, a pair of two-sex Siamese twins and a boy who loves the band Kiss. It is a diverse, but never indifferent authorship that we deal with. “… each man kills the thing he loves” The father in this year’s novel is the gifted and restless of the sibling group, who went to sea as a 15-year-old and returned home as a man of the world, a boxer and a great charmer. After the eldest brother died, he was the next to take over the farm. But this guy has a “capacity for violence” that makes him downright dangerous when drunk. He loses his nobility and inheritance, and when he is now on the farm with his son, it is at the mercy of a younger brother. It’s humbling. And he is not even allowed to drink. The trip up the mountain is like a false initiation rite. The son must be incorporated into, and expand beyond, the kingdom which is his, but which he can never obtain. It is also a test of manhood of the hard kind, and a both beautiful and brutal test of the bond between the two. The reader is on edge, especially when father is challenged. As when the zone shoot best on the blink. Will everything collapse? Will the son come down alive from the mythical family mountain? Since “Biopsi” is about these two in a later phase of life, he has to. But the tension lies and trembles throughout the entire novel. DEBUTANT: Lars Ramslie photographed in 1997, when he won Tarjei Vesaas’ debutant award for “Biopsi”. Photo: NTB The love that tolerates and tolerates “The mountain, the gun, the water” is told by Lars Einar. He is both nine years old and a mature author. Despite the fact that the father is long dead when the novel is written, he is often addressed as “you”. This is what father ended up saying the day before they were to go home: “… you will fall asleep on the plane. Lose your wallet somewhere between the airport and the train station, end up in a row, end up in embraces with drunk women (…). After being thrown off the train because the conductor refuses to pawn your watch.” He misses Lars Einar’s irreplaceable Kiss collection in the same chaos. The intense post-mortem dialogue bears witness to a father who occupies a large place both in life and death. When the father has managed to get hold of liquor, the boy notices it by the smell, the tone of voice, the look, the body language. The child becomes a master at interpreting signs. The story is told with this master’s eye for the telling detail, the sudden throws and the brief flashes of intense happiness. The text approaches and quickly retreats, approaches again from a slightly different angle, as a boxer approaches a competitor he respects. Rather than analyzing the relationship between father and son in psychological terms, Ramslie shows it through telling episodes and the spectrum of feelings these arouse in the child. This is an extremely strong portrait of a gifted man with a highly developed ability to destroy himself and others. That the portrait is, despite everything, so overwhelming and warm says something about the boundary-breaking forces that can be elicited by both literature and love. news reviews Photo: Oktober forlag/Exit Design Title: “The mountain, the gun, the water” Author: Lars Ramslie Genre: Novel Publisher: Oktober Pages: 204 Date: 12 May 2023 Several book reviews of Lars Ramslie’s books:
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“The mountain, the gun, the water” by Lars Ramslie – Reviews and recommendations
