FICTION

Before I Burn

by Gaute Heivoll
Graywolf. 2014. 336p. tr. from Norwegian by Don Bartlett. ISBN 9781555976613. $26. F
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Here's a true story, or at least a rendering thereof, of a 1970s arson case in southern Norway. It doesn't involve just a single torching—building after building burn in a month. Heivoll's novel, an international best seller, gives us a narrator who was just a child at the time of the fires, and he retells the story 30 years later: "It has pursued me for thirty years although I have never known exactly what happened or indeed what it was all about…. The story had been there like a shadow until the moment I decided to write it down." The narrative opens dramatically with several stabbings, and the characters—friends and neighbors like Olav, Kunt, and Joanna—are odd but not without their charms. Heivoll's fablelike tone is assured, and his sentences roll whittled in a Hemingway style.
VERDICT Despite these assets to the story, most readers will either acquiesce or roll their eyes at the fever pitch and labored first-person voice. Given the current appetite for Scandinavian thrillers, though, this book should find an ample, willing audience.
Reviewed by Travis Fristoe, Alachua Cty. Lib. Dist., Gainesville, FL , Feb 07, 2014
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