It is summer time on the island of Kvaloya, the time of the midnight sun. And Mats Sigfridsson has just drowned. Soon after his brother Harald also drowns. How could they both have drowned on such a calm, peaceful sea? And why had they both chosen to steal the same boat. Was it some sort of a suicide pact between the brothers? Liv Rossdal isn’t so sure. And after ten years thinking about the drownings she still isn’t sure.

Liv was eighteen that summer. Finished school and trying to decide what to do with her life. She had lived on the island inside the Arctic circle for as long as she could remember, her father had never been in her life, her mother had made the decision to relocate to focus on painting. They live an isolated existence, although her mother isn’t as much of a recluse as she and the art world sometimes make out. She has her weekly meetings with her “suitors”, and then there is the neighbour Kyrre Opdahl. A strange old man with her stories and tales of huldra and spirits and people who go out one day and are never seen again.

This is one of those books that I really have no idea how to review. Because to give away too many details is to spoil it. And yet the plot isn’t the important thing. It is the writing and the way Burnside tells the story. Liv is our narrator. From a distance of ten years she looks back at that “summer of drowning” and tells us what she saw, and did, and witnessed. What she thought about what had happened. So we have that delicious sense of foreboding all the time. We know from very early on that there will be drownings and mysterious disappearances. And the possibility of a huldra.

The huldra is a wild spirit that appears as a beautiful woman, she lures men to their death.

But the huldra does not exist surely. It is a creature from folklore and legend. But then what possible explanation could there be for the events of that summer in 2001? Before you start to get the wrong impression, this is not a fantasy romance with a new supernatural being at its centre, instead it is a strange dreamlike novel that you are much more likely to find in the literary fiction part of you bookstore than the YA.

The thing about this book that really stood out as I read it was the use of language. It really is a lovely book to just read and enjoy. I found myself noting down quotes almost constantly because both the way Burnside writes, and what he writes about really resonated with me. I loved the character of Liv. I don’t think she would be an altogether pleasant person to know, but I could totally understand and relate to her. Maybe not so much to her mother, although I did like the relationship between the two of them.

And I loved the whole atmosphere of the book, the cover image that I have here in this blog is a lot brighter and clearer than the hard copy one. Which is a pity, because the painting and artist are mentioned in the book, and are important, so it would have been nice to have been able to appreciate it more from the outset. But with the interwebs I was more than able to look the painter & artist up. There was quite a lot in this book that I looked up actually. From Norwegian phrases to artists and paintings, so I guess you could also call it an educational book.

One word of warning though, don’t start this expecting a cut and dried story with a neatly tied up plot, because that isn’t what you are going to get here, instead you’ll get a wonderfully written, atmospheric, and evocative novel. I’ll certainly be investigating more of Burnside’s work, I may even try some of his poetry, we’ll see how that goes though :) ( )

Exquisitely written but having just finished reading it I couldn't possibly put into words what it's really about. Need a while to savour it. ( )

Why do poets think that writing novels has to be hard work? Shakes head....

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/a-summer-of-drowning-by-jo... ( )

Why do poets think that writing novels has to be hard work? Shakes head....

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/a-summer-of-drowning-by-jo... ( )

Why do poets think that writing novels has to be hard work? Shakes head....

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/a-summer-of-drowning-by-jo... ( )

I couldn't finish this book as the contradictions in it were just too annoying. Crappy proof-reading? I don't know, but it definitely took away much from the novel. A pity really as the plot seemed promising. ( )

very difficult to describe this book, it is beautiful and strange, but in a self concious way... the problem with having a central character so isolated is that she doesn't care and so you end up not really caring about her. Enjoyable to read but not 100% satisfying ( )

From Amazon:

A young girl, Liv, lives with her mother on a remote island in the Arctic Circle. Her only friend is an old man who beguiles her with tales of trolls, mermaids, and the huldra, a wild spirit who appears as an irresistibly beautiful girl, to tempt young men to danger and death. Then two boys drown within weeks of each other under mysterious circumstances, in the still, moonlit waters off the shores of Liv's home. Were the deaths accidental or were the boys lured to their doom by a malevolent spirit?

My Thoughts:
The book is set on the isolated Norwegian island of Kvaløya in the Arctic Circle and the story is narrated by Liv who is now 28 but who recalls events of a summer when she was 18. The book makes much of the midsummer madness that 24 hour daylight induces and in that respect it is wholly successful. The main problem with the book for me was Liv herself. She's an odd character and I never really warmed to her. It occurred to me very early on in the book that there's something not right about her - but it was hard to say exactly what. Did that deserve sympathy or just plain irritation? She makes out that her location is part of her reason for avoiding people, but it seems more than that. She has just finished school but has no friends, apart from an old man, Kyrre Opdahl, who regales her with mythical stories. While this is a little irritating, what it effectively does very well is to create a level of tension and spookiness to the whole story. It's certainly not a comfortable read, but I suspect that is largely the author's intention. There's no doubt that it's beautifully constructed and it has a haunting feel to it but ultimately I found it to be less satisfying than I wanted it to be. For all Liv's retrospection, she doesn't really come up with anything concrete or very convincing. 4 possibly 4.5 stars

( )

Quite bad. It's unfortunate, I bought the book after seeing Burnside won the TS Eliot Prize, so he can obviously write poetry. But on the evidence of this, it doesn't seem he can write novels.

The main problem with this one is it's just plain boring. The events are interesting in theory, but executed simplistically. The location is the barren featureless north of Norway, just suburban enough to avoid any thrilling sense of wilderness. The characters are uncommunicative and emotionless, which I guess is supposed to be novel, but it just contributes to an overall effect of blankness.

Worst of all, especially for a supposed poet, is the way that Burnside is constantly seeming to grapple with some grand ineffable quality that he can't adequately describe. It''s probably interesting if you're in John Burnside's head, and can feel this mysterious sublime vibe, but for the rest of us it just feels like lazy and adolescent writing. ( )

This puzzling, poetic, even mythic, novel does not easily give up its secrets to the reader, even with determined repeated readings of key passages. A young girl, Liv, who has just finished high school, lives on a remote Norwegian island with her famously reclusive artist mother. Angelika, who once painted portraits, has, for the past several years, surrendered to the deep solitude of the place and is mostly lost in the work of painting landscapes. She is a beautiful, remote, and unavailable woman, more angel than human. Her daughter appears to have taken after her, demonstrating none of the expected traits and interests of a typical adolescent girl. Liv's best friend is an elderly man, steeped in old Norse stories. When two teenaged brothers drown, Liv--taking her cues from Kyrre, the old storyteller--believes that their deaths are attributable to a dark-spirited girl, Maia, who may be a modern embodiment of the huldra, a siren figure from Norse mythology, known to lure the "susceptible" to their deaths.

The world, Burnside intimates in this novel, is a great, unexplained mystery. Its meaning or, rather, the meaning of human events, is opaque. Liv grapples with the unresolved mystery of several deaths over the course of one arctic summer, and barely evades the clutches of madness in the process. In the end, it seems that the old stories, the myths, provide a structure, a narrative, if not a full explanation, for making sense of the strange, dark forces of life. ( )

Started off well and obviously very well written, but it didn't seem to go anywhere in the end. Felt like a book by a writer who knows how to write but has no clue at all about plot. I wasn't after a tightly tied up thriller but I did want something with a bit more depth than a character study. All the elements were there I guess, it just didn't work.

I'm making it sound worse than it was; I enjoyed it, but would have liked it to have been more. ( )