Kristina Carlson

I loved this short novel. It punches above its weight on a lot of levels. It is one of the few novels I've wanted to turn back to page 1 and read again when I got to the end.

Thomas Davies is an aethiest, and Charles Darwin's gardener. His wife has died, and he is left to raise his two young children alone, both of whom have health issues. We see him through his own thinking, and through the eyes of the village.

The novel captures the claustrophobia of rural village life, with its eccentric participants and its obsessions.

In its 122 pages we have nature, an exquisite evocation of silence, God and the lack of God. Desires and limitations.

Somewhere I read that the novel shared a style of Dylan Thomas's [Under Milk Wood], which I can see. It also put me in mind of a pared back Thomas Hardy novel. Carlson really captured English rural village life of the time, which maybe is not hugely different from its Finnish equivalent.

I found this little article about Carlson and her slow writing.

http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2010/04/kristina-carlson-on-writing-and-not-writi...… (meer)