"time to collect one's thoughts"

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.”