Melancholy Book

This is an exceptional attempt to penetrate into the artistic vision of Norwegian landscape painter Lars Hertervig. The first part details one day (assuming a pivotal one) in Lars's life during his time as a student in his early twenties (in 1853) at the Dusseldorf Arts Academy. Using a striking technique of near maddening repetition, Fosse captures the inside of Lars's mind'plagued with visions of smothering black and white clothes, prone to childhood daydreams, completely at remove from reality'as he is kicked out a boardinghouse after falling in love with the owner's daughter. He is ridiculed and humiliated by all his fellow students and tutors in the pub, and these excruciating sections are the most painful to read (sensitivity towards mental illness would need another 130 years). Skipping three years to his time in Gaustad Asylum, the story continues in the same style, ratcheting up the misery as Lars seems fated to remain locked up forever due to his violent sexual fantasies and self-abuse. The final section is less convincing'set in the 1990s around a writer descended from Lars pondering his re-entry into the Roman Catholic Church (written in a similar elliptical style). The story of Lars is fascinating and this book only offers a vague sliver of his life story, although Fosse seems to have written a second volume in Norwegian'hopefully being translated right now for Dalkey pub. A tremendous, painfully, painfully sad novel.