I hesitate to recommend Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller. Bad things happen. But… it
also made me laugh. Out loud. It made me think. And ultimately, it made me want
to tell everyone else to read it.
Widower Sheldon Horowitz lives in Oslo with his
American granddaughter and her Norwegian husband Lars. One morning when Sheldon
is home alone, a woman and young boy wearing blue Wellingtons show up on his
doorstep. Sheldon manages to hide in the closet with the young boy, but the
young woman is attacked and killed by the boy’s father.
Sometime later, Sheldon and the boy, which he names
Paul, escape and try to make their way to Lars’ cabin in the country. Along the
way, Sheldon seeks counsel from his dead friend Bill, relives a traumatic scene
from his own experience in the Korea, and grieves for his son Saul who died in
Vietnam: “He was such a beautiful boy. Can you remember? He glowed with the
eternal. And you didn’t touch him. And you can’t get the feeling of it out of
your hands.”
Tense with dark moments, the novel is more than a
thriller. It is not the chase that will have you on the edge of your seat, but
the characters when they ruminate on humanity, revenge, and death. And the
writing? It brings it all to life: “He expresses himself not in a torrent of
words and ideas and disruptions, revelations and setbacks, but through an
ever-expanding capacity to face what comes next. To see it clearly. To say what
needs to be said and then stop.”
