This book wasn't for me.

While I appreciated the quality of the writing, the plot was not strong enough for me and I was not engaged throughout the novel. It became a bit of a chore to read and I longed for the plot to be more concise and evident.

I know lots of people have enjoyed this so I think it's just a matter of it not working for me.

I don't know how true the translation is to the original, but I certainly wouldn't call this an easy read! The language doesn't flow well, which is a shame as the novel itself is quite a tale of love and understanding.

This is an amazing book, but it is probably not for all. It is a slow moving book describing life on an island in a matter-of-fact way which also describes the characters in the book. I ended up loving these straightforward characters and was very sad when the book ended and I had to leave them and the island behind. Highly recommend this if you want to read a very different book!

Beautifully written, really enjoyed reading this, highly recommend picking this up.

Dense , beautifully written novel

Sadly i never fully engaged

This is an insight into the isolated lives of the inhabitants of a Norwegian island. Their daily lives are destructed and recounted for the reader and the latter portions, that see the family's youngest daughter, Ingrid's, transfer to the main land, sharply contrast with this rural way of living.

I initially found the family's daily struggle for survival fascinatingly insightful into a way of life I know nothing about. There were also times, however, that it seemed almost tortuously slow and pointless, as an overtly detailed depiction of events was enumerated. There is little drama and no action, but there was an atmospheric quality that permeated the entire text and brought authenticity to the lives it detailed. Certainly insightful as an in-depth character study, but overall this was lacking pace and alacrity for me.

What a beautiful read. Location and scenery are key to this book. The enthralling descriptions of the isolated Scandinavian landscape frame the quietly interesting story of Ingrid Barroy, and her family life on a small Norwegian island. This is a story of family and community - however small that may be in Ingrid's case. It's a story of dreams for something bigger and acceptance of the here and now. It's a story of routine and hard work, yet a story of pushing the boundaries and finding out more about yourself. Like the scenery, the characters are well defined and intriguing. Well worth a read.

On the remote Norwegian island of Barrøy a small family of the same name struggles through the hardships of isolation, subsistence and the harsh climate at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a simple but not an easy life that takes comfort in small pleasures but remains staid, hardworking and clear-sighted.

I can certainly see why this quiet but affecting novel has been nominated for the Man Booker International Prize. The prose has a beautiful cut-glass clarity and the translation is smooth and faultless, effortlessly rendering the rural Norwegian dialect of the characters into English. The lives of the Barrøy family are recreated in faithful, evocative detail, with rich (if bleak) atmosphere. There's a hint of wistfulness for a way of life now vanished as the modern world begins its incursions into the lives of the Barrøy that doesn't fall into the trap of romanticising the hardship of remote, rural life.

And yet while I agree with so much of the praise given to The Unseen and its quiet beauty I would have been happier with a novel of half the length. A shorter narrative would have kept its great strengths in focus but instead these felt diminished and diluted by the time I reached the end.
I received a free copy of this work in return for an honest and unbiased review.

In January of this year, I had a wonderful time immersing myself in Nordic literature. I was entranced by the isolation, the human endurance and the untameable environment. Roy Jacobsen’s ‘The Unseen’ felt like a glorious return to so much of what I loved about these novels from the far north.

The book is set in a remote collection of islands off the coast of Norway. We are introduced to them in the company of a seasick priest on his first visit to ‘the fisherman-cum-farmer Hans Barrøy, the island’s rightful owner and head of its sole family’. What strikes the priest most is the unexpected view of the mainland, which he ‘has never seen before from such a novel vantage point … [he] stands admiring the whitewashed church that emerges and looks like a faded postage stamp beneath the black mountains where a few remaining patches of snow resemble teeth in a rotten mouth.‘

It’s a great introduction, but not really typical of the rest of the novel, in as much as the Barrøys spend very little time worrying about the mainland or appreciating their outsider perspectives. Instead, they follow in the footsteps of the hard-working Bjartur from Laxness’s ‘Independent People,’ Hamsun’s sturdy colonisers in ‘Growth of the Soil‘ and the close-knit families depicted by Tove Jansson. They are concerned with surviving in the here and now, living in an uneasy truce with the unforgiving weather and determined to make the most of whatever comes to hand. Everything brought in by the tides is kept and put to use, while what the tides and storms blow away is scarcely mourned.

‘The Unseen’, with its enterprising and stoic characters, makes for charming reading. It may not feel very new, partly because it falls so clearly within its literary tradition, partly because the prosaic, uncomplaining protagonists are reminiscent of last year’s Man Booker International short-lister ‘A Whole Life’ and partly because its use of dialect when characters speak is more Thomas Hardy than 21st century. I suspect all of the above will form a part of its appeal for readers; personally, I’m always happy to hide in my room and curl up with book in which brave characters show integrity and strength when battling the forces around them.

<i>'Winter begins with a storm. They call it the First Winter Storm. There have been earlier storms, in August and September, for example, bringing sudden and merciless changes to their lives.

The First Winter Storm, on the other hand, is quite a different matter.'</i>

The Unseen is centred on a three-generational family living on a tiny dot of an island off the coast of Scandinavia. There's Hans Borson and his father, Hans' wife and child (Maria and Ingrid), and Hans' sister, Barbro. But these aren't really the most important protagonists. The weather and the island are more deeply rooted in this book than anything else.

Their dreams are also deeply important. Hans dreams of a new pier to connect them to the mainland, a boat with a motor, and - secretly - a different life. Maria dreams of a smaller island, more children, and - a different life. But these lives don't tie together.

Hans is a disappointment to his father, not the son he wants to simply be content with life on Barson as it is, the belief that the the island is all they need. But the others want more, whether they realise it or not.

Ingrid is merely a child, but she is the inheritor of the island and, perhaps, understands it the most. Both she and Barbo (who has some kind of learning difficulty, although a much better worker than Maria) leave the island: Ingrid for the mainland as she grows up, and Barbro to be a maid on another island. But both return. Nobody can leave an island. <i>An island is a cosmos in a nutshell, where the stars slumber in the grass beneath the snow. But occasionally someone tries . . .</i> Barbro returns due to certain circumstances (I won't give it away), and Ingrid returns to fight for the home she thought she left behind.

This is a story of hardship and toil. There is no release for the islanders. The weather batters them, and they are constantly physically and internally bruised.

There is some beautiful prose; the translators have done a wonderful job. The islanders dialect felt rather clunky, but I think that must be almost impossible to get right.

Despite all this... this book really wasn't for me. I had to force myself to keep reading it. And it was nominated for the International Man Booker! I don't know whether it was my mood or what, but it was too slow. Which was wholly intentional, I understand that: it isn't a fast paced, plot driven book. But somehow I couldn't fully engage, which really disappointed me. I wanted to like it. But really I was going through the motions.

Don't let that stop you reading it. I seem part of a small minority. I'd like to reread it some time (ha! - when I don't have a huge pile of new books to read and review), because I just felt I missed it. It passed me by. And that truly saddens me.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC copy. All views and opinions are my own.

2/6 from Booker International Prize Shortlist. 4.5*

My heart fills with love while I sit on my chair thinking how to review The Unseen. Its “quiet beauty” (a perfect description of this book read in another review) enveloped me and concurred my soul without me even noticing.

It is almost impossible for me to explain why I loved this small novel so much, since at a first glance it contains some elements that I run away from: long descriptive passages and recount of life at sea. I will try, though, with some images, my humble words and with the help of the author’s, to introduce you to life on a small island in Norway.

The Unseen captures the day to day life of the Barrøy family on a small, one family island on the Norwegian coast, probably at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel starts with only 5 people living on the island: Hans, Maria – his wife, the daughter Ingrid, Martin - Hans’ father and Barbo- Hans’ sisters.

The island, “is a little under one kilometre from north to south, and half a kilometre from east to west, it has lots of crags and small grassy hollows and sells, deep coves cut into its coast and there are long rugged headlands and three white beaches. And even though on a normal day they can stand in the yard and keep an eye on the sheep, they are not so easy to spot when they are lying down in the long grass, the same goes for people, even an island has its secrets.”

Life is hard on the island and there is a permanent struggle to survive and to construct a more comfortable existence. Hans has to go to Lofoten each winter with a fishing boat from where he receives half of the catch proceeds. This represents a major part of the family’s income completed by the sale of fish caught around the island, of seagull eggs ( I had no idea they were edible) and milk from their livestock.

Winters are especially hard in such a remote place. The family is forced to battle the harsh forces of nature and most of the time they are at their mercy. “Winter begins with a storm. They call it the First Winter Storm. There have been earlier storms, in August and September, for example, bringing sudden and merciless changes to their lives.

The First Winter Storm, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. It is violent every single time and makes its entrance with a vengeance, they have never experienced anything like it, even though it happened last year. This is the origin of the phrase "in living memory", they have simply forgotten how it was, since they have no choice but to ride the storm, the hell on earth, as best they can, and erase it from their memories as soon as possible. “

The family seems to be bound to live on the island. "once you settle on an island, you never leave, an island holds on to what it has with all its might and main." Barbro and Ingrid tried, in turn, to leave to work as maids on the mainland but the island always called them back, sooner or later, by choice or by tragedy.

The Unseen has a slow moving plot but I did not feel it as a slow read. This would be my choice to win the MBI prize but, in the same time, I can see why it would not be a favorite. The book might be too quiet; there isn’t too much of a dramatic atmosphere even when tragedy strikes.

There is only one thing that made my reading experience less pleasurable. The English dialect invented for the translation of the dialogue between the islanders is a bit strange and forced. However, I understand that the author is very difficult to translate and a hard decision had to be made on how to deal with the Norwegian dialect. Excepting the dialogue, the translator made a wonderful job, his previous experience with Min Kamp and Jo Nesbo’s novels definitely helped.

Many thanks to Roy Jacobsen, Quercus Books, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Whenever one reads a novel that has been translated, there is always an underlying fear that something of the original must be missing. I am delighted to write, however, that this is certainly not the case with The Unseen where the two translators (Bartlett and Shaw) have really done an excellent job. Not only have they preserved the wonderful atmosphere and the very different 'feel' to this novel about island life in Scandinavia, but have even retained Jacobsen's remarkable sentence structure with its multiple subordinate clauses, which lends the whole book an air of something quite out of the ordinary.

In terms of plot, it is a novel in which very little takes place outside of the daily cycle of life on the small island of Borroy, but just what a fascinating and difficult way of life that turns out to be. The island itself, along with the incredible forces of nature that continually batter and shape both it and its few inhabitants, is as much a central character in The Unseen as the people themselves. The same could also be said of the few animals that struggle to survive there - the ram and the small flock of sheep, the recalcitrant horse, and the cat who is not allowed to chase the eider ducks that provide the much prized down which the family sell at the Trading Post. The art of fishing is also elevated to a level which the sheer amount of fascinating detail of just how the fish are caught and preserved through the winter months is of as great a significance and interest as anything else which takes place between the family members and their occasional visitors.

Jacobsen does not feel it necessary to fill in all the details as we follow the lives and sometimes deaths of Martin Borroy, his son Hans and wife Maria, his daughter Barbro, and their respective children. The reader must calculate the passage of time by the development of this younger generation - who end up managing the island and its natural resources against all odds - and the relentless changes in the weather from season to season. Any dialogue is limited in keeping with the close-lipped nature of the island's inhabitants and rendered in a form of dialect, whilst the main thrust of the plot is provided through the omniscient narrator whose own distinctive voice kept this reader spellbound from start to finish.

This is truly a novel that take the reader on a journey of discovery into a fascinating world about which few of us can have any prior knowledge. It may be a harsh and challenging way of life that Jacobsen presents to us, but it is certainly one that is rendered in such poetic yet restrained language that it leaves a lasting imprint long after we have finished the final page.

Stoicism and endurance in Lofoten’s archipelago

Roy Jacobsen’s novel The Unseen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, set early in the 20th century, is as bleak, spare and without frills, and as far from the shifting, rootless lives of modern cities as its chilly, austere setting suggests.

This is a book which moves slowly, inexorably, and at times cataclysmically : nothing happens except by natural, seasonal rhythms. The most expressive and dominant character is the landscape itself, particularly a tiny island homestead, Barrøy, settled and named by and for the family who fished and subsistence farmed it for a handful of generations.

Patriarch Martin Barrøy is reaching the end of his rule, lacking the physical strength to wrest fish from the icy waters, or repair a house constantly pounded by gales, torrential rain and driving ice and snow. His son Hans, married to Marie is the real head of the family Their toddler daughter Ingrid, barely 3, and Hans’ unmarried sister, Barbro are the only other residents on the island.

Covering a timespan of barely a couple of decades, the high dramas of human existence – birth and death, flowering and fading, are dealt with as they must be. These are lives of struggle, visceral and competent, intensely practical.

It took me some time to settle into fascination and absorption with the recounting of the minutiae of day to day existence – the fashioning of a jetty, for the better housing of the small fishing boats, the repeated destruction of the building by storms, the repeated rebuilding, the challenges of catching fish, drying, salting. Trading between the small islands and how the weather might make that impossible.

This is not a book which takes the reader into deeply expressive interior journeys of character. There is a taciturnity about almost all the characters, they do not discuss their feelings. They are do-ers, not describers. When they do speak, their language is archaic, a dialect, and they are given at times words to say which show some relationship to Northumbrian dialect. These are Norsemen and women, for sure:

“My word, hvur bitty it is. A can scarce see th’houses.” Hans Barrøy says:
“Oh, A can see ‘em aright.”
“Tha’s better eyesight than mysel’ then,”the priest says, staring over at the community her has worked in for the last thirty years, but has never seen before from such a novel vantage point.
“Well, tha’s never been hier afore.”
“It’s a good two hours rowin’.”
“Has tha no sails?” Hans Barrøy says.

So, right away, the reader begins to think about an isolation beyond isolation. The Barrøys must travel this long route to be able to trade their produce. Children need educating, and Ingrid, when she reaches school age, will need to make this journey to the larger island, and stay there, two weeks on, two weeks off, for the length of her schooldays. These are hardy people, daily battling with survival.

This is a strange book, in the end, alluring, seductive, alien. The Barrøys, all of them, have great dignity and authenticity. It’s strange, in some ways, to read a book where all the characters are in some ways so ordinary, so undysfunctional, so sturdy.

For those disinclined to read representations of dialect, the fact that these islanders are taciturn will no doubt be a relief. For me, the dialogue worked, the short, pithy rhythms of speech have a music, and I was taken by the way the characters met their real life challenges with fortitude and grit. In a strange, bleak way the book has a kind of life affirming quality – mainly because there is little sense of the kind of malevolence, deviousness and treachery in these lives, instead a community unsentimental, borne out of the necessity of struggle, daily, with environment. People must trust, and must be able to trust each other. Treachery comes from wind and water, but that too is respected, viscerally loved and sensibly feared

These Lofotens are clearly a wealth away from the tourist destinations they have become a scant 100 years later

I received this as a digital copy for review, from the publishers, via NetGalley. And I recommend it

The Unseen is one of the short-listed titles for the Man Booker International Prize

I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Having just finished The Unseen I can fully understand why it was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017. This book is stunning. Brought up on a small Norwegian island, surrounded only by her immediate family, we follow Ingrid from her childhood to adulthood. This is a beautiful portrait of a family existing in spite of the elements, of defying poverty. Despite living a fairly hand to mouth existence the family rule the island as its only occupants. They are poor but free – masters of their domain, striving to improve their lives. The environment and the force of nature are powerfully captured in the prose – drawing you into a world of natural extremes. Ingrid is a wonderful, strong character trying to work out her relationship to the island, her family and the outside world. I highly recommend this book.

Barroy Island on the north coast of Norway, a bleak and inhospitable place to make a life, but for one small family it is home, and this quiet, measured book describes their existence as they battle the elements and are faced with difficulties and disasters. No date is given, but that doesn’t matter as it is very much a timeless tale of life in a remote community, told without sentimentality or romanticism, but with great compassion and understanding. It’s a circumscribed life, to be sure, but not a narrow one and as full of passion, longing, desire and tragedy as any other. I loved this gentle book, with its vivid descriptions and atmospheric tone, and I found it lingered in my mind long after I finished it. Highly recommended.

There are some books that are a delight to read and leave a haunting impression when completed. This I must admit is one of them.

Set on the fictional island of Barrøy situated off the North-western coast of Norway in what I assume is the early part of the 20th century, the novel tells the story of the Barrøy family from whom the island takes its name. Indeed the island can be viewed as the main character. The topography of the island is conveyed in detailed descriptions and by the end one can get a vivid picture in one's mind of what it actually looks like.

This is a story of day to day survival as the family battles the merciless Artic winters and the volatile weather where sudden storms could occur any time. The family's future is linked to the future of the island and the changes that are coming, for instance mention is made of a new railway being built.

This is a book where gender roles are explored and developed as well as the role of family, society and the need to respect and understand nature. A profound book which I would highly recommend.

This is the story of the Barroy family who live their lives on their own small Norwegian island, overcoming daily hardships, ruled by the seasons, with no technology or engineering whatsoever. The family is composed of Martin, daughter Barbro, son Hans, Han's wife Maria, and daughter Ingrid. You are slowly drawn into their world as the family expands and contracts in a couple of unusual ways. They are taciturn people who say little and rarely share their hopes and dreams. Instead, they go ahead and act and react against the many hardships that island life throws at them, trying to improve their lot with many setbacks. It is told in plain prose which is made to sound a little quaint possibly because it is translated. There is little direct speech; what there is is written in a dialect that is reminiscent of Yorkshire (tha, th'). A couple of years ago, I read about people living on the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides. This reminds me very much of that. This book is not for everyone but for me it is a powerful reminder of how complicated our lives have become and how simple our needs really are.

Well, I'm really glad I finished it, because at one point I thought it wasn't worth the effort. I received this copy from NetGalley, which was great, because it is usually difficult for me to get my hands on the books shortlisted for the international Man Booker prize.

The story centres around a family living on an island off the coast of Norway. They're self-sufficient and a tight unit, but island life has its hardships. The patriarch, Hans, leaves every winter with his brother for additional income, while the rest of his family, wife Maria, sister Barbro, daughter Ingrid and father Martin, handle the daily needs of their land. The entire story is about isolation, and the struggles the family goes through to get to neighboring islands or to other people.

The book is translated from the original Norwegian, but is surprisingly easy to read, with words painting a haunting and vivid picture of the island and its main inhabitants. Most translations are verbose and dense, but this one wasn't. I did find a fair few words and turns of phrases that didn't quite belong, but it added to the alien nature of the book's world and characters. What didn't work at all was the dialogue; I'm guessing the translator wanted to imbue the verbal interactions with an authentic Norwegian feel, but it was a failed experiment. For the most part, I couldn't understand what they were saying. By the end, I found myself skipping over the dialogue as it was a waste of time trying to interpret it.

While I read this book, I felt like I was missing something - like I didn't 'get it'. It's beautifully written, no doubt, but I fail to see the point of it. There's no real plot - which is fine, real life has no plot - but there isn't much drama either. The episodes/chapters that deal with weighty issues such as the potential ill treatment of Barbro by her prospective employer because she suffers from an unnamed mental disability, or the one where Barbro runs away; Ingrid learning to deal with people other than her family at school, etc, made sense. But others just meandered along, not adding much to the journey of the characters or the reader.

There was one episode - the break in - which is sparse and terrifying, and the only time the book really lit up. It astounds me that there was no follow through with that - even if the burglar had not returned, I assumed the author would have investigated the psychological impact of the occurrence.

Instead of telling us about these day to day incidents, I wish the author had explained why the state of the characters was such. Why was the only prospect available to Barbro and Ingrid that of being a maidservant? Why did they open their arms to the Swedes and how come they weren't as scary as the burglar? How did this family get on this island?

There's very little resentment on hand, which surprises me, because close proximity to anyone for prolonged periods of time makes people irritable and difficult. Not with these characters though. I'm not saying these characters didn't have personalities, but with the exception of Ingrid, most didn't exhibit emotions quite like the rest of us.

I feel like I should really like this book, but can't because it's reason for being escapes me. I can see why people do love it, but an international Man Booker shortlist - overhyped I would say.

This is the story of a family's struggle to survive on a tiny island in the Arctic Circle. We hear about that struggle in day to day detail, where children help out almost as soon as they can walk. It is an unbelievably tough existence and yet they seem to tackle enormous tasks with a level of stoicism that is hard for us, in 21st century Western living, to comprehend. It took me a little while to get in to the story, but I was glad I did.