I really didn't care for this book. I found the ending in particular to be unpleasant and unsatisfying.

Thank you to Carl Johansen, NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

We first meet Dennis Ferguson at his wife's funeral. While he seems sad that she is gone, he seems more lonely than anything else. He meets a woman at the park, a refugee, and befriends her family. When they disappear, he goes on a journey of his own to find them.

Dennis is an ordinary man leading an ordinary in the Midwest. His search for his neighbors is compelling, but disturbing. This is a political commentary on Trump's America. I did not understand the ending and for that reason, I will give it 4 stars. Otherwise, an amazing novella with some excellent points.

Dennis Ferguson, an ordinary man leading an ordinary regular life in a small town in the American Midwest. Recently widowed and recently retired he wonders whether it is time to engage more with the modern world around him. His first tentative steps meet with only partial success until he encounters a young Iranian refugee in the park. From that point on events start to spiral out of control. As does the book. I really enjoyed the first part. Dennis is a relatable and sympathetic character, his meeting with the young Iranian woman seems to offer an opportunity for a more fulfilling life perhaps, but then it all goes to pot and the ending is both beyond credibility, somewhat confusing and totally unsatisfactory. Reflecting current events and politics in the US just before the Biden election, I felt that the novel did a good job of describing one man’s awakening to his responsibility as a citizen in an increasingly dystopian America. But oh that ending. Such a shame as I was ready to give the novel a high rating up to that point. Disappointing.

Literature fiction at its finest, if you like allegorical tales. I read this short novella in one sitting and found the protagonist interesting, if not their motivation truly apparent. The fable-like quality of the writing ensures a gentle unfolding of a retired shop keeper and their destiny with the consequences due to leader’s selfish preoccupation of themselves. Whilst having obvious reference to recent political events, its power is in its understated believable narrative. An allegory of true quality with a four-star rating. With thanks to NetGalley and the author for a preview copy for review purposes without obligation.

Ferguson was well written, an interesting story about a man who has just lost his wife and is feeling adrift. He often walks to a park near his home. One day he starts a conversation with a woman in traditional Arab dress, who seems quite uncomfortable. They continue to talk casually whenever they see each other in the park until she starts to mention some subjects close to her. The two become casual friends and talk philosophy quite often.
This book delves into ICE, the unrest in the US as well as Iran.

In my opinion, the book dealt too much with philosophies and politics. That isn't my interest when reading casually.

I received this book from from Netgalley without any promises for a positive review. #Ferguson #ICE

What did I just read? It certainly isn’t a book I can recommend.

Dennis Ferguson, recently widowed and recently retired, befriends Nasrin Kirmani, an Iranian refugee, and her husband and son. Nasrin keeps challenging Dennis, asking what he will do about the injustices in the country: “’We can all do something, Dennis. . . . What will you do?’” When the family disappears, he decides to act.

This novel does not read like a novel. It reads like a diatribe against President Trump and his supporters: “’the president is a confirmed racist, and . . . the ruling party is systematically undermining the Constitution, the courts and the free media’” and “relations between leading countries within NATO were getting progressively worse, and the president threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran” and “’The US is now ruled by an openly authoritarian president, backed by the majority in Congress. The KKK and Neo-Nazis march with the president’s blessing’” and “’The greatest achievement of this presidency and the Republican Party has been to make truth irrelevant’” and “the president’s party had spent years dismantling laws and institutions, as well as the very political culture of tolerance and forbearance itself, so that it had now become impossible to exercise democratic, legal oversight over the escalating corruption and authoritarian execution of power under the current administration.”
Personally, I might agree with these observations and even enjoy the description of a senator from South Carolina as “roach-like,” but I expect a novel to show the president’s tyranny, not just have a character talk on and on about his shortcomings.

Though clearly based on the current political situation in the United States, with a president “staging a number of these rallies . . . as part of the re-election campaign,” events then become part of a dystopian future where “clashes between various groups of protesters and the police had so far caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries” and where “student activists [are] knifed in dark back alleys” and where “political murders were framed as the fight against terror” and where immigrants fall “’victim to one of the militias or White Power groups we suspect are behind a number of recent killings and disappearances.’” The final scene is certainly downright dystopian. Is the author speculating about the future should Trump have won re-election?

At the beginning, the protagonist spends time reading Plato’s The Republic. Paragraphs and paragraphs are devoted to detailing what he reads. Anyone expecting a novel will soon find him/herself reading a not-very-concise summary of Socrates’s views of justice. Presumably this reading and Nasrin’s prodding influence Dennis to act, but I find it difficult to reconcile the passive, uninvolved citizen at the beginning and the man of extreme action at the end. Dennis keeps repeating how he is experiencing only “less-than-obtrusive grief” after the death of his wife of forty years, yet he experiences such anger and grief when people he barely knows disappear? His change is anything but convincing.

Style is a real problem. The book is very dense with exposition. A paragraph may go on for pages! The constant use of questions becomes annoying: “To what degree were one’s thoughts and the words used when thinking them shaped by one’s surroundings?” and “To what degree was it the music itself he’d craved, independent of the message it carried? How much had the message conveyed by the music influenced his life and the person he had become? And if it had, what form had this influence taken?” and “But where did all that leave the soul? And how did such a system process feelings? Where [sic] they purely impulses too, passed between electrified primates through coded messages?” and “What was life? Was it inextricably linked to reproduction, or did it have an intrinsic value beyond bringing new life into the world?” and “Was there such a thing as a universal truth? A deeper reality behind everything else?”

I read a galley and this book is a translation from Norwegian so perhaps these account for some of the grammar issues where motive is used instead of motif and where verb tense is incorrectly used.
Some things just make no sense. When paramedics arrive in his home, Dennis asks how they got in because the door was locked, and he is told, “’We have all sorts of keys, you know’”?! Then when he refuses to go to the hospital, he imagines the paramedic’s concerns: “He sensed that she was still weighing up the pros and cons. The risks against the costs, the bonus from the insurance company versus the chance of being sued. She would certainly be insured, you wouldn’t get a job as an authorized health worker without insurance, but you still had to pay the deductible.” An EMT receives bonuses from insurance companies? The white light in a mall is described as “a flat light, as flat as the floor he was walking on, and as square as the shop facades, the roof, the walls”? A book store employee asks him to write down the name of the author and the book he wants? And then when there is no available copy of The Republic, she offers him books by a famous crime writer? Is this a comment on the stupidity of people who work in bookstores? Jesus’s parables must be understood “’as divine inscrutability explained in words and images everyone can easily understand’”? And what does inscrutable mean?!

This book needs major revision and editing.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

I struggled to connect with this novel. It is well written, but not to my taste. At times the prose feels overwritten to my liking. It was a DNF for me after approximately 20%.

A fascinating examination of life and society, Johansen looks at what it means to be part of a community in a troubled world. A timeless message about finding your place in the world.

I received this book from NetGalley for a review.

The book's first half was mostly dominated by the main character, Dennis Ferguson, reading philosophy in his local park.  It didn't seem like this trait enriched the character or forwarded the plot, so I'm unsure why Dennis pulled us into his reading so much.  While based on our current political climate, the second half of the book took so many liberties that it veered into a dystopian-like setting.  While reading about Dennis' descent into madness at the state of his world without his wife and new-found friends, I found it difficult to reconcile the older widower at the beginning of the book, with the odd character at the end.

It may be that I didn't understand the book very well, but overall I did not like it.

Setting is the midwest, and the central character is Dennis Ferguson, recently retired and widowed, at times looking back on his life and attempting to adjust to his new lonely purposeless one.He befriends and Iranian woman he meets in a park ,develops a casual friendship, and the disappearance of her and her family, for obvious political reasons,( her blog highly critical of current events)confronts this previously uninvolved citizen with a choice-to sit back passively or take action. It is obviously based on currents events in the US,and the potential for future chaotic events. Climate disasters run amok, an alien police state, committed disciples -they are all here. I thought it a short but at times difficult read, but did enjoy it.

I loved the characters and how their relationships were developed. The author has string views and a strong message. I like books with that sense of commitment but appreciate this may be confronting for some readers. The writing style is unusual but in a very food way - at times it danced almost towards poetry.

This book started off well. I was drawn in by characters I began to feel a connection to and was looking forward to seeing how the plot developed. It reminded me greatly of “A man called Ove” only until about 2/3rds of the way in, when it appears the original writer lost his grip on the plot and the editor switched him out for an ultra left wing Marxist sympathizer lobbing grenade after grenade of ideological tropes.

The last 1/3rd felt half baked and rushed, on the nose in a “Trump is bad” preacher-y sort of way, ultimately devolving into an acid trip of an ending.

Not since Fiona Mozley’s Elmet has an author pis@ed me off so thoroughly with an ending. You might want to get this book to test your own reaction.

This is a little book that packs a big punch. I did not expect the ride but was along the whole way, getting fed up right along with Dennis Ferguson. This is a societal critique and I didn't know it wasn't an American author until after I'd finished. Nothing gets lost in translation here. The transition at the end from everyday life to fantastical theater had me on the edge of my seat.