Ales junto a la hoguera

by Jon Fosse, Cristina Gómez-Baggethun (translator), Kirsti Baggethun (translator)

Sola en su vieja casa de la costa noruega, Signe mira por la ventana y se ve a sí misma veinte años atrás, sentada ante la misma ventana, mientras espera el regreso de su marido, Asle, durante una terrible tarde de finales de noviembre en la que él se subió a su bote de remos para no regresar. En una suerte de caleidoscopio, las imágenes de aquel trágico día se superponen a visiones del pasado y su vida en común, pero también con recuerdos que abarcan cinco generaciones de un clan familiar y su lucha constante contra la inclemente naturaleza que les rodea, hasta llegar a Ales, la tatarabuela de Asle.

En la prosa vívida y alucinatoria de Jon Fosse, todos esos momentos habitan el mismo espacio, y los fantasmas del pasado colisionan con los vivos. Ales junto a la hoguera es una visionaria obra maestra, una inquietante exploración del amor y de la pérdida que se encuentra entre las más bellas meditaciones sobre el matrimonio y el destino humano.

Genres: Fiction, Nobel Prize, Literature, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Novella, Scandinavian Literature

107 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Jon Olav Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black). His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry, children's books, essays and plays. His works have been translated into more than forty languages. He is widely considered as one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights. Fosse was made a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007. Fosse also has been ranked number 83 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses by The Daily Telegraph.

He was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable".

Since 2011, Fosse has been granted the Grotten, an honorary residence owned by the Norwegian state and located on the premises of the Royal Palace in the city centre of Oslo. The Grotten is given as a permanent residence to a person specifically bestowed this honour by the King of Norway for their contributions to Norwegian arts and culture.

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

! 05.10.2023 Now the deserved winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2023

3.5 rounded down.

Jon Fosse can write. Tediously, annoyingly, repetitive, stifling, dark but beautifully. To me, this short novel felt like an exercise leading to his bigger and more important work, The Septology. The 1st volume of that series found me in a less than ideal mood for hard prose so I could not finish it. Aliss found me in a more suitable mood and I savoured it better. I think (haha) that it is the ideal place to start reading Fosse without being overwhelmed, enough to make the reader want more. After reading this book, I decided to try again with Septology, this time in Romanian, where I saw there is a lower count of the word "think".*

* This book is full of"I think" as well but somehow it did not bother me as much.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first Fosse that I've completed, although I've dipped in and out of Damion Searls's translation of the multi-volume Septology. Stylistically, this has much in common with the Septology and can perhaps be seen as a 74-page forerunner to the much longer work. Fosse is an interesting writer to me because he is formally inventive - very much on the vanguard of 21st century writers - but, thematically, seems to be looking at 20th century preoccupations. There is plenty of Nordic introspection here. The characters reside in a seemingly insular community, contemplating themes that run more domestic than global. Fosse packs a lot of literary fireworks into such a slim volume, which I appreciate, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone who wants to dip their toe into his work. Published recently by Fitzcarraldo in the UK; Dalkey Archive published it in 2010 in the US.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Huge congrats to Jon Fosse for being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature!**

‘what ties two people together?’

I’m always on the lookout for a novella that can pack an enormous emotional and intellectual sting into a tiny package of few pages. Jon Fosse’s Aliss at the Fire is certainly a rewarding book of this sort, and the reader is left in awe at the enormous landscape of thought and emotive power that stands before them as Fosse reaches his surreal, efficacious conclusion. While the ‘reality’ of the book consists only of Signe, an elderly widow, lying on a bench in 2002 after looking out over the fjord that swallowed her husband, Asle, back in 1979, the brilliant metaphysical qualities of this novella open a kaleidoscopic world dancing before Signe’s eyes that bring past and present together, ironing out the wrinkles of time, to allow the dead and the living to comingle in order to grant Signe, and the reader, a painfully insightful look into Asle’s grim family legacy. Told in a long, swirling sentence full of a repetitive cadence that gives language the feel of waves crashing upon the shore, Fosse crafts a microscopic meditation of family and loss that explodes with a prodigious impact through the dazzling, yet haunting mental images that are sure to enchant the mind’s eye.

Jon Fosse is a highly regarded novelist and dramatist in his home country, so much so that he was awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government to continue his literary career. There is such a wonderfully haunting visual nature to Aliss that hints at his talents as a playwright; Fosse perfectly constructs his scenes with deft attention to spatial and surreal visual details that spring such a flawless mental image that I recall the book in retrospect more as something I’ve viewed than read. Brevity is Fosse’s true talent as he dives right to the core of human suffering and resurfaces in only 107pgs with a fist-full of truths that are sure to weigh heavy on the readers mind for days and weeks to come, and the book seems ripe for a one-act stage play. The dialogue, though sparse, is crisp and witty, and rather humorous for a novella of such heavy themes, and feels perfect to be heard echoing from a stage. It is no surprise that he is often compared to Henrik Ibsen, and, as I am yet unaquianted with Ibsen (I use Hamsun’s disdain for Ibsen as my scapegoat for this blatent reading inadequacy), the surreal and hallucinatory nature of Aliss conjure up memories of Sartre’s one-act plays we studied during my undergrad days¹. What a haunting play it would be, giving physical form to the hypnotic words upon the page much like Asle’s family members back through generations given form in the modern day to relive out their past, aquatic tragedies while a young Signe stares out the window awaiting a husband who will never return and an aging Signe lies upon a bench in grief and horror at the waking nightmares that assail her each night.

whether he notices it and thinks about it or not the walls are there, and it is as if silent voices are speaking from them, as if a big tongue is there in the walls and this tongue is saying something that can never be said with words, he knows it, he thinks, and what it’s saying is something behind the words that are usually said, something in the wall’s tongue…

Signe lives in a house formerly occupied by her late husbands generations stretching back deep into time, and her grief has unlocked their tragedies, unstuck them from time. Fosse expertly pulls the reader through her consciousness as she relives the final moments with her husband, then allows the dead to dance about the fjord and house as the reader and Signe witness a family history forever linked to the fjord—a source of life, as it is full of fish to feed a family and provide a modest living as a fisherman, and death. Aliss, the great-great-grandmother of Signe’s Asle, must rescue her infant son from the icy waters so he may live to foster an Asle that will drown on his seventh birthday in the same waters that Signe’s Asle will perish in years later. Fosse’s fiction is reminiscent of the American Southern Gothic where the past is forever lurking in the peripheries to cast its mighty hand upon the fates of the present. It is actions, the unspoken, that speak the loudest, that echo eternally in the rotting wood of Signe’s home, speaking volumes of torment and grief with each creak brought on by the icy northern winds that toss boats upon the waves.

The repetition of events and ideas, two souls snuffed out beneath the frigid waters, or Aliss’ fire (rife with pagan imagery) recalled by the mid-summer festivities when Signe allowed two youthful boys to burn the late Asle’s boat washed up and neglected upon the shore, crash repeatedly on the shore of the readers mind, demanding a connection to ascribe meaning in the void of existence. As if the remembrance of these untimely deaths could validate their ever being here, to resurrect their memory in an eternal flame in the darkness of eternity.

but it’s big, the fire, and pretty, the yellow and red flames in the darkness, in this cold, and in the light from the fire he sees the waves of the fjord beat like always against the stones of the shore…

As with most Norwegian literature, nature is a primary character, lurking in the shadows as the reader trains their eyes upon the flesh-and-blood characters, but holding the true power and control over their lives and stories. Aliss is kept dismal and dreary with constant imagery of cold and dark. It is interesting that Asle vanishes into the darkness while wearing a black sweater knit by Signe herself.

he is standing and looking out into the darkness, with his long black hair, and in his black seater, the sweater she knit herself and that he almost always wears when it’s cold, he is standing there, she thinks, and he is almost at one with the darkness outside, she thinks, yes he is so at one with the darkness that when she opened the door and looked in she didn’t notice at first that he was standing there…

Perhaps part of Signe’s torment is a belief that she herself cast her husband into the darkness, cloaked him with it not only physically with the sweater, but through the distance between them. It is hinted that Asle returns to his doomed vessel in order to avoid Signe’s form standing waiting at the window. It is the absence of a woman’s immediate care that causes each tragedy: Aliss is tending to the roasting sheep’s head when her son runs into the water, young Asle drowns when his mother is not watching, and Signe’s Asle drowns when he leaves to, as is hinted, avoid her. Everything moves in waves and cycles.

Fosse wields language much in the same way as his cycle of motifs. He is fond of repetition, cycling through several ideas multiple times before moving forward, with each repeated phrase coming crashing back like another wave. It would be interesting to hear this read out-loud, especially in it’s original language as I wouldn’t be able to understand it, but would hear the repetition rolling back in and out. It is almost like a miniature chorus or a repeated phrase of music, over and over, harmonizing with what is present and what is to come yet always pulling us back to what has been. The repetition can be, however, rather grating on the reader and was, for me at least, initially repelling. It is as if forward progress is stifled at times, or like trying to drive fast in too low a gear, yet it is really Fosse trying to best understand an idea that is before us. Like a child first learning their bearings in the world, he takes an idea and turns it over again and again, viewing it from all angles and leaving nothing untouched so as to properly project a fully defined message. He has a few other linguistic quirks that assist him in his goals, yet could easily, and understandably so, be frustrating or annoying to a reader. Aliss has this really fascinating ability to seamlessly transition between characters, usually from Signe into her husband’s perspective and back. However, the voice of the narration never changes, leading the reader to believe that it is one perspective that attaches itself to another, or at least to it’s notion of what another perspective might be perceiving. The lack of periods in the novella’s punctuation lends assistance to building this feel. The conclusion to Aliss is especially haunting, as Fosse drops a heavy, burden of a final statement into the readers hearts and souls, then leaves it open without a period, as if the story is to now flow into the reader, as if the weight is now transferred onto them to carry and come to grips with in the days to come. It is only in the first and final lines (to say sentences does not make sense with the structure of this work) that Fosse mentions an ‘I’, and while the conclusion connects many dots, the elusive ‘I’ only brings more questions to the table.

Aliss at the Fire is a heart-wrenching meditation on loss and family legacy that really comes alive with the hypnotic and haunting visual imagery created by the compression of time. It is not for the faint of heart, both with the poetic style that borders on both genius and annoying, but for the weighty conclusions and difficult truths the reader is faced with. Time is no comfort to the broken hearted here, but only a long line carrying a monstrous baggage that will continually beleaguer the broken hearted. This is a book best examined in hind-sight, making it one that I feel requires patience and willingness from the reader to appreciate. Truth be told, I did not particularly enjoy reading it until the final third of the book, however, I feel that a book cannot be adequately judged until it is viewed in it’s entirety, as a completed portrait, and passing judgment before the final unveiling would be a grave misgiving. I had intended to only give this three stars until writing this review made me realize a few things about the book I hadn’t thought of. It is a book that, while being a bit cumbersome, really comes together once you’ve allowed it to properly cook and simmer and be enjoyed with its full flavor. Jon Fosse is a marvelous writer with a sense of style not commonly found, and once you’ve attuned yourself to it, there are fantastic things to be discovered. Aliss at the Fire, with all it’s loss, grief and frozen landscapes, is a brutally savage package of emotional and intellectual power that is haunting to the core.
3.78/5

‘and the darkness outside the window was black and he was almost impossible to tell apart from the darkness out there, or else the darkness out there was almost impossible to tell apart from him, that’s how she remembers him, that’s how it was…’

¹ Fun fact: Sarte wrote one-act plays so the audience could view a stage performance yet still have time to get home in before the curfew enforced by the German occupation.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Human life always revolves around the basic motifs of human existence such as loss, grief, memory, and love; these quintessential themes of human existence generally rise from reminiscences of the past which keeps reverberating against the comforts we might have devised in our present. The ghosts of our past are at times too strong to be killed in the present and they surreptitiously become part of our lives by making home in our consciousness, consciously or subconsciously. The doubts about our existence which always creep into our psyche take birth from the eternal relation between our conflicting mind and outside world, the existential anguish of humanity underlines its eternal quest to look for peace. As we have seen with Norwegian literature, here too, nature lies at the center of this haunting work on human condition.



link: source

The book starts with an ageing woman, Signe contemplating on the incidents of some twenty years back which changes the fate of her life. She thinks about her beloved husband, Asle, who she lost around two decades back when he moves out to fjord one evening to never come back. What is being unraveled here is a series of thoughts and vivid images from the memory of the protagonist, these searing memories comprising of picturesque, nostalgic and dark images of her life with her husband, the time lost and their unfulfilled existence.


The reader is given access to the conflicting mind, as ours is, of Signe who is lying on a bench but seeing herself rising from the deep cervices of her bygone times to stand at a window waiting for her husband, Asle. But as we plunge deep down into the text, we find the memories of Asle intertwined with that of Signe, we find the voice of Asle too speaking to us interchangeably as if both of their voices amalgamated into one, as if their existences fused to one. Not only that we also witness with a sense of eerie and awe that the images of the long forgotten history of Asle’s family surge up from the dungeons of past and dance there with the memories of Asle and Signe; we find that images of Asle’s forefathers rise to scene by breaking up all the known rules and threads of nature as we see Aliss standing by the fire with his son who is incidentally father of Asle’s great grandfather after whom Asle is named.


The ghosts of the past spring up from the nothingness to fill up the same space in which Signe and us, the reader reside, to make it a visual kaleidoscope of memories from the bygone times of different generations of Asle existing with the present, trying to make peace with the nature in the exactly similar way as it is being done in the present. The sympathy of the readers is drawn out towards the protagonist on such a haunting and harrowing remembrance of the past as at times it might become unbearable to carry the past on the shoulders of present, the burden of the memories of the past may get too heavy at times to move forward so much so that the intense gravity of the burden may plunge any person to nothingness. We see that the book becomes a literary mosaic of loss, love, grief and uneasiness filling the literary space through the emotive and soul-stirring landscape of shadows of past whirling around the repentances of present to give the prose a hallucinating and surreal effect through the suspended existence of Signe and perhaps Asle too.


It is my first read by Fosse and I thoroughly enjoyed the portrayal of human existence trying to make peace with its motifs through the suspended existence of the protagonist who enters in a sort of limbo wherein the life of protagonist keeps revolving around the apparitions of past. The author is a master of repetition as we see in the book that same scenes or images are being infused in the narrative at various junctures to give it a dreamlike touch such as we see burning of boat of Asle by two boys throughout the prose, perhaps underlining a ray of optimism amidst the dance of darkness and that is to move on by leaving behind the past. The repetition of Fosse is not of typical nature as he draws the portrait of anything or feelings from variegated perspectives, the muddling with the identity of the characters by assigning them same names is a conscious effort to repeat the circumstances and settings in front of different characters to see how they react, perhaps to underline randomness of human nature.



link: source

The book reminds me of Everything Passes by Gabriel Josipovici perhaps not because of its prose but mainly because of themes the book deals with and how the protagonists react to them. Aliss at the Fire is being written in a single paragraph in the form an interior monologue, like that of Samuel Beckett who he is often compared to, to carve out an intense but savage picture of human loss and grief, the bereavement of pain. The profoundness of the prose of Fosse could be assess from the fact that he has been able to construct such a moving and heart-wrenching picture of humanity, dealing with grief by braving through the pain as if to heal itself, across the setting of just a room, memories, ghosts from the past and of course, the fjord. I immensely enjoyed this portrayal of ‘mystic realism’ of ordinary life as Jon Fosse calls its prose.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aliss at the Fire is written in the same style as Septology. It is a tale of recurring destiny.
The stream of thoughts is incessant… Nothing can stop her remembering and imagining… One day her husband disappeared but he is still there in her memory… 

…everything is as it was before, nothing has changed, but still, everything’s different, she thinks, because since he disappeared and stayed gone nothing is the same anymore, she is just there without being there, the days come, the days go, nights come, nights go, and she goes along with them, moving slowly, without letting anything leave much of a trace or make much of a difference…

She returns again and again to the day he vanished… Her thoughts run in circles… But every time the circle is slightly wider… And now she imagines that he imagines his great-great-grandmother standing by the fire on the shore… 

But that is Aliss, in her early twenties, he thinks. And the boy, about two years old, that’s Kristoffer, his great-grandfather, the one who would later be Grandpa Olaf’s father and also the father of the Asle he was named after, his namesake, the one who drowned when he was just seven years old, he thinks and he sees Kristoffer start to cry dangling there in Aliss’s arm and she puts down the stick with the sheep head on it and then she sets Kristoffer down on the shore and he stands up and stands there unsteady on his little legs…

In our lives we always find something and lose something. At times we manage to regain what we had lost and at times our losses are irreplaceable.

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

** Update: I want to read this book again so bad!!!
*Update: A well deserved winner of Nobel Prize for Literature 2023.

What ties two people together?

I don’t know how to describe the emotions I went through reading this book. It went something like this:
‘damn! Another headache-inducing-no punctuation-no paragraph blah-blah’…
‘wait a second!!! What? What?’…
‘don’t you dare cry! Don’t you effing dare cry!’…
‘my heart is hurting, my eyes are burning…why? why?’

He was there and then he was gone. He was the darkness, the darkness was him.
She keeps searching for him; she keeps standing by the window, waiting for him.
Will he ever return?
This is a tale of love and loss; a tale of remembering; A tale of darkness and of fire.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The failing intellectual powers of the elderly mind cause it to wander obsessively. It seems, therefore, to the narrator that his or her tale has no satisfactory ending, and can never have one.

That’s me a lot of the time, and that’s Fosse, who, like me is a septuagenarian.

You know, if you've lost your absolutes in a story, your memories act spasmodically. You feel trapped, as you do now in Fosse. Walls close in and the devil is in the details. I love this book, because it's a flashback to the failure of my own words to close off the Void of the Inconclusible.

I am not alone, then. Fosse too needs God’s sure direction.

Perhaps 2023 is the year of seeking closure for us all - and this year’s Nobel Prize committee has agreed!

Have you ever reached that metaphysical void in your mind? Your memories start doubling and redoubling, turning inward, producing transmogrified hypnogogic images that Double and Redouble, folding ever more inwardly on your innermost core - or outwardly into vast void space.

Like Aliss.

All depends where Fosse's Daemons are driving us, for, like me, he has plenty of those! At the best of times we know the loudness of life is maya. At the worst of times maya sprouts bats' wings.

Our Daemons always prey on our weakest link - for some, livid rage, for others, all-access sensuality, or, for goons like me, the ignorance that morphs into mental failings - according to the Buddha, for whom these three comprise the three poisons.

And no one is exempt.

In a recent study of the vast potential (for mischief, I wonder?) of our brains, one science writer proposes that we are made up of many selves. The classic book of Split Personality, Sybil, is perhaps not too far-fetched.

The empty soul of this book is multiple. We thank our guardian angels at first for its centerlessness.

But lose your absolutes, and you will have no remission from Fosse's multiple-personality, automatic pilot device in Aliss and his other works. I became Catholic to escape lesser devils.

Fosse did the same, when his literary dancing on tenterhooks became unendurable.

Faith even functions in the permafrost of Doubt, you see, if you're Catholic.

But don't let your doubling back upon hope wait too long, as Fosse did.

***
In deep sleep my dreaming hypnogogic imagery often replays my zany attempts at escape through my books - pictorially.

Thinking that is no longer thinking: True Quadraphenia.

Read Fosse with caution.

He takes you places you don't want to go.

But he's a Great Writer in the lineage of Joyce or Proust.

For his work gives us our modernity, face-to-face -

Searching for answers in an Infinite Hall of Mirrors:

On which there are no faces but our own - in an endlessly mirrored transmogrification of the real.

[Fionnuala]

I read this short book to see if I'd like Jon Fosse's style enough to start his much longer Septology. I did and I did.

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5*

E entra no vestíbulo e as velhas paredes envolvem-no e murmuram-lhe qualquer coisa, sempre, pensa ele, é sempre assim, quer repare e pense nisso ou não, as paredes estão aqui e é como se houvesse vozes a murmurar que saíssem delas, há um grande silêncio nas paredes e este silêncio diz algo que nunca se pode dizer com palavras.

Este foi o primeiro livro de Jon Fosse que comprei, quando a editora Cotovia ainda existia, mas a produção mais recente do autor foi-lhe passando à frente, e como ainda não me impressionou verdadeiramente, “É a Aless” corria o risco de ficar a apanhar pó por tempo indeterminado se não fosse a existência do audiobook. Suspeitava que, pelo seu estilo melopeico, ouvir as obras de Fosse narradas fosse mais compensador do que lê-las, e, de facto, pela qualidade quer da obra quer da narração, acaba de se tornar a minha preferida do autor.
Quatro anos depois de “Manhã e Noite”, Fosse regressa ao motivo fúnebre do barco. Em Novembro de 1979, Assle desaparece na enseada deixando o seu pequeno barco a remos à deriva. Em Novembro de 1879, o pequeno Assle morre afogado enquanto brinca com o seu barquinho no mesmo local. É, portanto, uma narrativa em espelho.
23 anos depois, na casa que o marido herdou da avó Aless, Signe não se conforma com o sucedido e, ao olhar da janela para a escuridão, vê Assle a partir naquele fatídico dia e vê-se a si mesma na janela e no divã no presente e no passado, nesse longo dia de espera, como se numa experiência de abandono do corpo.

E vira-se e olha para o divã e vê-se a si própria deitada no divã, e, é incrível! ela está aqui à janela e vê-se ali deitada no divã, e parece tão envelhecida, tão cansada, e o cabelo ficou tão grisalho, mas ainda é comprido, e imagine-se, estar aqui à janela a olhar lá para fora e depois olhar também para o divã e ver-se a si própria lá deitada.

Neste universo fantasmagórico, temos um fenómeno de portas giratórias em que Signe, deitada no divã em frente à lareira, assiste à entrada de vários dos antigos moradores desta casa como se de mundos paralelos se tratasse.

E, ali, deitada no divã, ela vê-se a si própria de pé a olhar para as chamas do fogão e depois vê-se a ir até à janela, a parar e a ficar olhar lá para fora, e depois, ali, junto à janela, olha na direcção da porta do quarto e esta abre-se e ela vê Brita, que mantém a porta aberta, e vê o cabelo dela muito justo à volta do rosto e vê Kristoffer à porta com um pequeno caixão branco nos braços e vê-o a entrar na sala

Ainda que possa parecer confuso, são técnicas que o autor norueguês usa de forma orgânica para compor uma obra de grande expressividade.

Ela empregou grandes palavras, mas é melhor não pensar nisso, porque se havia alguma coisa de que ele não gostava era de grandes palavras, as grandes palavras só tapavam e escondiam, não deixavam as coisas viver e ser como eram, mas levavam-nas a querer ser algo de grande.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aliss at the Fire is more of Fosse’s hypnotizing prose, the ever-expanding sentence that starts with an observation and continues on until an abrupt “somewhere”. If you’re not open to that style, you won’t enjoy this book (or any of Fosse’s other prose work, I suspect). I hope I’m not being disrespectful to Fosse to say that his works perfect what Murakami tries to do – touching on archetypes and vaguely held images within our collective unconscious, and perhaps within the collective unconscious of our own family lineage.

The motifs here are similar to those used all throughout Septology - the boat, the fjord, the staring out of the window, the memories. They create a beautiful harmony that is loosely held in the mind. I am sure you could drill down, proving the connection of X with Y, trying to count the appearance of each boat and each Asle and each fjord, but it would be useless. Maybe it’s lazy to say that – I don’t necessarily care. I think overanalyzing these works of painting/prose/art kills them on the spot. We sense the connection, we feel the Matryoshka Doll of destiny (look at the fire on the front cover), and that should be enough. Letting what is happening inside us do the work, incubating, that will be of much more use down the road than trying to pin down an exact framework for what Fosse is doing.

Along the lines of the Matryoshka Doll, I think of psychoanalysis and its concepts (that I definitely should have researched more before committing it to a written paragraph, but we move) surrounding the repetition of patterns. The “impulse” to constantly replay a moment, a compulsion to come back to pain over and over again. I am starting to be increasingly aware of this when reading Fosse’s prose work. I wonder if he is a fan of Freud/Lacan.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's an old house, yes, it's an old house.
darkness, bleak, black, have you seen the fire?
the purples, the reds, the yellows out in the fjord?
who is this in my mind? is it me? is it Alse?
let me live vicariously through you, let me be within your being,
let me think, let me see, let me roam, let me live, let me die.
november, it snows, the pale white snow.
peering out of the window I see him. I see them.
it's been 20 years. why do I still see him? why hasn't he come back?
Signe, get up, you are alive.
old Aliss is out there: motherly, grandmotherly, great-grandmotherly.
they walk, they scream, they are immortal,
the fire burns as the dead live again.

EDIT: Looking back at this almost 8 years in the future, it looks like I read this in the summer of 2015 and would've been more well-suited in the winter. As I've started and finished the first volume of his Septology, me along with others, see this as a prequel of sorts and it makes me want to re-read it after I finish Septology.

[Sydnee O'Donnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I see myself reading this book, lying down on the couch, sitting up in the living room, why am I still reading this book? I think, why does it never end? I think, as I lie down on the couch, why am I always lying on the couch reading this book? I think, and I see myself lying down, sitting up, turning the pages, and there are only 116 of them but it feels infinite as I see myself looking out into the blackness, exhausted from reading this book, and why don’t I care about any of the characters? I think, why do I feel nothing, and why are my feelings this way, and why do I feel this way, why am I feeling this way? I think, maybe I feel this way because the constant repetition is exhausting, and I see myself searching in vain for a paragraph break or a period, and I see myself seeing myself seeing the ghost of my partner’s great-great-grandmother, but for some reason it does not faze me, I act like it is normal, why does it not faze me? I think, and a purple fire is burning outside, no, that can’t be, I think, but it is, I think, yes, a purple fire burning outside, and maybe I should go outside or call the fire department or do literally anything useful whatsoever, I think, but I still see myself lying down, as I continue to narrate the extraordinary events in the same dull monotone, and it is a Saturday in January, January 13, 2024, and why am I spending my Saturday reading this book? I think, on this Saturday, January 13, 2024, as I see myself in the living room, on the couch, seeing the ghost of my partner’s great-great-grandmother wash the dishes, always the ghost washing the dishes for some reason that I don’t care to find out for some other reason, or maybe no reason at all, I think, as I sit in the living room and lie on the couch, and why is this book so boring and emotionless? I think, and why do I always see myself, the way I read this book, the way I place it down in frustration as soon as I have finished it, and I see myself writing this review, lying on the couch, sitting up in the living room, and finally, on this Saturday, January 13, 2024, it has ended.

My aunt’s review: “It’s like putting a red dot on a canvas hanging it up in a museum and everyone ooohs and aaaaahs too vain to admit they don’t get it”

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

É a Ales é mais um livro muito poético do genial Jon Fosse sobre o lugar da memória no tempo e no espaço, sobre a sua persistência avassaladora como elemento identitário diante da solidão e do fim.
Triste como só a vida pode ser, esta obra reflete sobre um tema fascinante: a sobreposição dos papéis que vamos ocupando ao longo da vida e consequente identificação com os nossos ancestrais.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short novella, about 80 pages, but one that jolts the reader back and forth, constantly shifting from one period to another (I've noticed at least 1979, 2002, and 1897), and from one character to another (and sometimes merging into each other). At one point I thought, "This is like being in a tiny boat, in the middle of a fjord, in stormy weather," and to fully capture the spirit of this little book, I have to add "I thought." The clever thing is that Fosse expresses this restless shifting in very slow, almost hushed and dreamlike passages, a bit like the incomparable American video artist Bill Viola (1951-2024) did. Add a dash of surrealism (a fire in the middle of the fjord, people from three generations ago moving among the "present-day" characters...), and this novella seems like a series of visions. It's an ethereal and fascinating reading experience, in which especially feelings of loss and bereavement are expressed. Although my more down-to-earth self still is left wondering: what's the point, what is Fosse trying to say? It's like cursing in church, I know. Perhaps I should just see it as a starter, and sink my teeth into the Norwegian's more substantial work.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I have wanted to read for several years, since it was alluded to by the narrator of Amy Arnold's Slip of a Fish. Like all of the Fosse books I have read, it has a very strong sense of place and is largely about memory, visual imagery and loss, but it is perhaps a little too short to have the emotional resonance of the recent Septology. Like the Septology, it is mostly written in long single sentence monologues, but at a few key moments this pattern is broken by short abrupt ones. Once again we are on a remote fjord north of Bergen, and the names Asle and Ales/Aliss are familiar - it appears that the Aliss of the title was Ales in the Norwegian original. This one goes further into the past, as some of its key events occurred in the nineteenth century.

[lautesbrot · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Warum will er nicht mit ihr zusammen sein?, denkt sie, stattdessen fährt er immer mit dem Boot raus, dem kleinen Boot, einem kleinen Ruderboot, und jetzt muss er aber zurückkommen, denkt sie, und sie ist so unruhig, denn so lange bleibt er sonst nicht auf dem Fjord draußen, nicht bei so einem Wetter, und wenn es so dunkel ist wie jetzt und so kalt, sie kann sich nicht erinnern, dass er schon mal so lange weggeblieben wäre, und warum kommt er nicht mehr?“

Jon Fosse fordert den Leser, die Aufmerksamkeit und seine Figuren. „Das ist Alise“ ist ein reines Verwirrspiel. Ständig wechseln die Zeitebenen und die Perspektiven der Charaktere lösen sich mehrfach ab, meist mehrfach innerhalb eines Satzes. Keine Kapitel, keine Absätze. Die Wörter fließen und man muss doch öfter genauer hinschauen, um zu wissen, welche „sie“ nun denn „sie“ ist. Und wirklich sicher kann man sich nie sein.

Genau das wollte Fosse, als er das Verschwinden von Signes Mann Asle erzählt. Doch geschildert wird nicht nur die Geschichte von Signes und Asle, sondern auch den Vorfahren Asles. So wechseln die Perspektiven ständig zwischen Signes, Asle und Asles Verwandten, die schon alle tot sind. Die letzten Generationen der Familie von Asle lebten alle in dem Haus, in dem er mit seiner Frau zuletzt lebte. Der Ort bleibt also gleich, das kleine Haus am Fjord, doch die Personen und die Zeit wechseln ununterbrochen.

Was ist Zeit? Zeit existiert nur in der subjektiven Wahrnehmung. Sie hat keine Bedeutung ohne den Menschen. Das endlose Warten der Signe auf ihren Mann. Die einzelnen Zeitebenen. Sie spielen keine Rolle, ohne den Menschen, der sie als Orientierung nutzt. Fosse nimmt das Konzept der Zeit und verwirrt den Leser mit den endlosen Zeitsprüngen. Er entzieht uns der zeitlichen Orientierung und man fühlt sich verloren. Nun will man sich an den Personen orientieren, um definieren zu können, wer da nun spricht. Auch diese Orientierung will Fosse dem Leser nicht gewähren. Man fällt beim Lesen immer wieder auf dem Boden, weiß nicht mehr, wer wo was ist und versucht mithilfe des Textes wieder den Sinn (der Handlung) zu finden. Ein weiteres Motiv: der Sinn. Hat das Warten einen Sinn? Hat der Tod von Familienangehörigen einen Sinn? Hat die Zeit einen Sinn? Hat der Sinn einen Sinn?

Jon Fosse hat viel zu erzählen und obwohl sein Text so einfach scheint, ist er zwischen den Zeilen doch dicht und bietet viel Stoff für den Kopf; während und nach der Lektüre. Ich muss trotzdem zugeben, dass mir das Werk an einigen Stellen zu repetitiv war. Dies ist Geschmackssache. Ich erkenne die Repetition als ein Stilmittel an und es erreicht definitiv den gewünschten Effekt. Das Buch ist so oder so eine große Bereicherung!

[Great-O-Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Das ist Alise" ist ein weiteres Meisterwerk vom Literaturnobelpreisträger Jon Fosse. Er erzählt auf kürzestem Raum von Familiengeschichte, dem Leben und Sterben am Wasser, dem Ertrinken, dem Verschwinden und der Zeitlosigkeit.

Die grau gewordene Signe blickt im Jahr 2001 auf Asle zurück, der 1979 verschwunden ist. Er fährt gerne mit dem Boot raus. Wenn es zu windig ist, geht er spazieren. Eines Tages kommt er nicht zurück. Ist er ertrunken wie sein Vorfahre gleichen Namens? Signe liegt auf der Bank des Hauses, das ganz früher Alise gehörte. Die Erzählstimme wechselt unscheinbar von Signe ("sie denkt") zu Asle ("er denkt") und zurück. Asle denkt an seine Ururgroßmutter, die titelgebende Alise. Er beobachtet sie...

Erneut bin ich in den Fosse-Sog geraten. Was auf der langen Strecke der Heptalogie funktioniert hat, hat mich auch in der kurzen Novellen-Form wieder in den Bann gezogen.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golema lepota! Foseovo „vreme vode”: tekst kao udomitelj duhova, sa oštricom bez ivica, prozračan, modar, mrk, leden, neutešan, razarajuće snažan, dodiruje nerečje.

Trakl, Vesos, Beket, Ulven, Transtremer, Bergman. 

I surovi, a božanstveni, norveški pejzaž.
Ako fjordovi nisu mesta za nešto presudno, ne znam šta jeste?

„posmatra zidove, bože šta mu je danas i zašto je ovakav? pomisli i osloni se šakom o zid, i oseća da mu zid nešto govori, razmišlja on, nešto što se ne može izgovoriti, ali što postoji, prosto postoji, razmišlja on, oseća se skoro kao da dodiruje ljudsko biće, razmišlja on, skoro kao da je nešto rečeno, kao što nešto biva rečeno kad se dodirne ljudsko biće, pomisli i pređe rukom po zidu, i taj pokret je skoro kao milovanje” (40)

[Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ele vai dar uma volta no Fiorde, pensa ela. Ela está à janela à espera dele, pensa ele. Mas está muito frio, pensa ele e é melhor ir para casa, pensa ele. É perigoso ir para o Fiorde com tanto frio, pensam ele e ela. E o Fiorde e o frio e a janela e um menino a brincar com cabeças de ovelha, é muito aborrecido, penso eu. Será melhor desistir, penso eu.

“Pequeno no tamanho, mas grande em intensidade, este livro é para todos aqueles que não se iludem com a espuma inconsequente que hoje passa por literatura.” - Ler

"Em que é que estás a pensar, diz Signe
Em nada, em nada de especial, diz Assle
Em nada, diz Signe
Sim, eu, diz ele
e fica parado a olhar para ela
Eu, diz ele
Eu, eu, é, acho que vou, diz ele
Vai, diz Assle
Vais, diz Signe
Eu, diz Assle
Eu acho que vou dar uma volta no Fiorde, diz ele
Hoje outra vez, diz Signe
Acho que sim, diz Assle"
...
"Eu não estou a pensar em nada, diz Assle
Não estás a pensar em nada, diz Signe
Não, diz Assle
Não estou a pensar em nada, diz ele
É, estou só aqui, diz ele
Estás aí, diz Signe
É, diz Assle"

Prefiro iludir-me com espuma inconsequente, penso eu...

[Michał Michalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Piękny obraz nieprzemijającej żałoby.

[Elena Sala · Rating 4 out of 5]

ALISS AT THE FIRE (first published in 2003, in Norway) is a slim, sombre novel set in 2002. Signe is an aging widowed woman who lives a lonely life near a fjord. Again and again, Signe remembers the stormy night her husband, Asle, died while boating in the fjord waters close to their home. Just like his own grandfather, also called Asle, before him. A case of history repeating itself.

Then, there is a change of perspective: the reader will read about other inner thoughts, of other characters: not only Signe's thoughts but also Asle's and the thoughts of other ancestors, even those of Aliss, Asle's great-great-great grandmother.

This is an almost plotless novel which uses repetitions as a constructive device. Not only history and names are repeated, but the obsessive musings of the characters. Perspectives change without warning, we are never sure who is doing the thinking nor the time the events described take place. The prose is experimental and mesmerizing. ALISS AT THE FIRE is a truly captivating story of marriage, solitude, memory and loss which I would warmly recommend.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

That's Aliss at the fire. That is Aliss, he thinks, his great-great-grandmother, he is sure of it. It's Aliss, he was named after her, or rather after her grandson Asle, the one who died when he was seven, the one who drowned, he drowned in the bay, his Grandpa Olafs brother, his namesake. The boy about two years old. that's Kristoffer, his great-grandfather the one who would later be Grandpa Olafs father and also of the Asle he was named after, his namesake, the one who drowned when he was seven years old, he thinks

Aliss at the Fire is Damion Searl's translation of Jon Fosse's Det er Ales (2004). The English translation was originally published in the US in 2010 by Dalkey Archive but has been published for the first time in the UK in 2022 by Fitzcarraldo Editions, who also published in 2019-21, contemporaneously with the Norwegian Nynorsk originals, translations of the various volumes of Fosse's Septology, for me perhaps the best book of the 21st century to date.

Aliss at the Fire featured in Amy Arnold's Goldsmiths shortlisted Slip of a Fish, which, from its opening pages reminded me of Fosse's work in its use of light and water, and then on page 22 the narrator starts reading an unnamed novel:



I pulled it from the shelf. It was exactly as I remembered it; a small paperback, black, with a painted flame, one line each of yellow, read and white. I knelt down on the floor of Abbott’s study and read,
'Signe lies on a bench.'
That’s how the book begins. That’s almost how it ends too.

Although the opening line is slightly misquoted and actually reads (this just part of a lengthy sentence):

I see Signe lying there on the bench in the room and she’s looking at all the usual things, the old table, the stove, the woodbox, the old panelling on the walls, the big window facing out onto the fjord, she looks at it all without seeing it and everything is as it was before, nothing has changed, but still, everything’s different, she thinks, because since he disappeared and stayed gone nothing is the same anymore, she is just there without being there, the days come, the days go, nights come, nights go, and she goes along with them, moving slowly, without letting anything leave much of a trace or make much of a difference, and does she know what day it is today? she thinks, yes well it must be Thursday, and it’s March, and the year is 2002, yes, she knows that much, but what the date is and so on, no, she doesn’t get that far, and anyway why should she bother? what does it matter anyway? she thinks, no matter what she can still be safe and solid in herself, the way she was before he disappeared, but then it comes back to her, how he disappeared, that Tuesday, in late November, in 1979, and all at once she is back in the emptiness, she thinks, and she looks at the hall door and then it opens and then she sees herself come in and shut the door behind her and then she sees herself walk into the room, stop and stand there and look at the window and then she sees herself see him standing in front of the window and she sees, standing there in the room, that he is standing and looking out into the darkness, with his long black hair, and in his black sweater, the sweater she knit herself and that he almost always wears when it’s cold, he is standing there, she thinks, and he is almost at one with the darkness outside, she thinks, yes

This passage has Signe, looking back from 2002 on herself and events in 1979, although as per the opening quote someone (herself? Asle? Aliss?) is observing her observing herself, and the Signe of 1979 also sees the Signe of 2022, one of many such timeslips in the novel.

On that late autumn night in 1979, Signe's husband Asle took his rowboat out on to the fjord as he did almost every day, except this time he didn't return. And, when the novel switches to his narrative perspective, we see that before his own disappearance, he had a timeslip of his own, seeing his great-great-grandmother Aliss (Ales in the original) standing at a fire, as per the opening quote that gives the novel its title.

The novel is told in one continuous piece of narration, but one that slips between narrative perspectives and times, and five generations* of Asle's family, Asle himself the last of the line, each of whom lived in the house where the novel is set, where he has lived his whole life, first with Father and Mother and his brothers and sisters, and then with her, the woman that he married. Another crucial date and event that both he and Signe see is the drowning of another Asle, Aliss's grandson, and brother of his grandfather, on November 17, 1897, when, on his seventh birthday he took a toy rowing boat to the fjord to play.

[* NB I say five generations but actually Asle's own parents get little mention in the novel, other than in the sentence quoted above]

The relationship between Asle and Signe is at the heart of the novel and it is an intriguing one as they seem to be both ancient soulmates - when they first met it was as though they were old friends, as though they had always known each other, in a way, just that it had been such an immeasurably long time since they had last seen each other - and yet Asle every day seeks solitude on the fjord - Suddenly it’s almost totally dark he thinks, and he looks at the fjord and the waves are beating hard against the shore, and he can still see the waves, but mostly it is that he can hear them, he thinks, and now he needs to turn back, go home, but he doesn’t really feel on the mood to go back home, and why doesn’t he want to? is it her standing there in the light of the window, is that what makes him not want to go home? no it’s not that either

Overall, a beautifully written book and a good gateway book to Fosse, although the style of the novel is perfected in the stunning Septology.

Translation notes

The original Norwegian title of Aliss at the Fire would translate literally as 'It's Ales' and Searls chose to change both the title and the name of the corresponding character in the novel as he explains in a translator's afterword in this 2022 edition and also earlier in the LA Review of Books in 2021:

I changed Ales to Aliss in Aliss at the Fire, because “ales” is an English word; the literal book title, It’s Ales, would look like a beer guide.

At first that seems a rather unnecessary change, and Searls did use the name Ales when it reoccured in the Septology and comments that "the decision might be different now" a dozen years later. But the LARB interview sets the decision in context by explaining the many choices involved in translation and the need to avoid the overly literal.

E.g. Searls notes in his interview the lack of a continuous present tense in Nynorsk, as well as "to look" and "to see" being the same verb with a preposition added to the form, so that in the following sentence-fragment from the opening of the novel, in the original the verb "ser" is used in all three cases, but in Searls' words "I have to write clear and forceful English without clinging too closely to the Nynorsk, and that means availing myself of the subtle difference between whether she sees or is seeing."

I see Signe lying there on the bench in the room and she’s looking at all the usual things, the old table, the stove, the woodbox, the old paneling on the walls, the big window facing out onto the fjord, she looks at it all…

[Zahra Naderi · Rating 2 out of 5]

کولی کنار آتش، رقص شبانه‌ات کو؟

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aliss at the Fire is the third book I read this week about time being fractured at the cost of memory.

Signe is remembered an incident in 1979 when her husband went fishing and was found dead some weeks later. Before he disappeared he saw his great grandmother. Like a probe we go deeper into the husbands family and we find out that one of his relatives died the same way. Thus the book is an intergenerational look at grief.

As I said chronology is fractured, to a point where Signe is looking at herself in the present and past and the narrative keeps switching with only a few clues to help and like The Other Name, the use of memory can bring up complex emotions.

Compared to The Septology books, I would say that Aliss at the Fire is Fosse-lite and not a bad place to start. Like those books there’s one sentence which moves in a cyclic way, which can be an acquired taste. Saying that Fosse is excels at documenting human emotions in such a way that I find his books to be profound. Aliss at the Fire is no different, although may not be his best, I think it has a stronger emotional impact.

[Zoha Mortazavi · Rating 5 out of 5]

«با خودش فکر می‌کند طاقتش را ندارد و باید یک چیزی به او بگوید، با خودش می‌گوید یک چیزی، و بعد با خودش می‌گوید انگار هیچ چیز دیگر مثل قبل نیست و نگاهی به دور و بر اتاق می‌اندازد و بله، همه‌چیز مثل قبل است، چیزی فرق نکرده، با خودش می‌گوید چرا چنین فکری می‌کند، که چیزی عوض شده؟ چرا چیزی باید فرق کرده باشد؟ با خودش می‌گوید چرا باید از این فکرها بکند؟ همین که اصلا چیزی می‌تواند فرق بکند؟»

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

অনুবাদক বিনয় বর্মন ভূমিকায় জানাচ্ছেন "গল্পের বয়ানটি টানা, বিক্ষিপ্ত, অনেকটা প্রলাপের মতো, পরম্পরাহীন ধোঁয়া ধোঁয়া স্বপ্নের আদলে উপস্থাপিত।" অস্লো ও সিংনেকে নিয়ে গল্পের শুরু। তারপর এই পরিবারের কয়েক প্রজন্ম কোনো আগাম সংকেত না দিয়ে কাহিনির যত্রতত্র ঢুকে পড়ে। এমনভাবে ঢুকে পড়ে যেন তারা এখানে সবসময়ই ছিলো, এমনভাবে ঢুকে পড়ে যেন তারা এখানে কখনোই ছিলো না।তাদের স্মৃতি, ব্যথা, সংশয়, বেদনা তালগোল পাকিয়ে সৃষ্টি করে এমন এক ভুবনের যার কোনো অর্থ নেই; ঠিক জীবনের মতো। এ জগৎ স্থির, অকম্পিত, হিমায়িত ও "প্রাচীন চিত্রের মতো চিরস্থায়ী " যেখানে মৃত্যু আর স্মৃতিই ধ্রুবসত্য, একমাত্র ���ত্য।

[Momčilo Žunić]

Konac visi nedohvatan. Pripovedna krivulja vrtloži se maltene kao da potiče od munkovske linije nordijskog pejzaža [da, mislim na "Bele noći" s Arhipelagove naslovnice], osim što je bezobalna i nezatvoriva i onda se, bez obzira na naslovnu deiksu, ne može položiti prst i reći: "To je Ales", niti dopreti do onog što neko JA posmatra i sluša s rubova pripovesti

Premda bih svom ovom sleganju sećanjâ i vremenskih horizonata, u onome što bi se već moglo nazvati uobičajenom Foseovom rečenicom što računa i na overlapping prizora i fragmenata i na počelnost*, mogao i da oponiram: to nije UM pun preminulih duša, to je STARA KUĆA**. Jer "i zidovi su tu, i kao da iz njih progovaraju ćutljivi glasovi, u zidovima je velika tišina i ta tišina govori nešto što se rečima nikada ne može iskazati". Svakako ne krupnim rečima. Na njih Fose ni ne baca mrežu. Jer "krupne reči, one samo skrivaju i prekrivaju, krupne reči, one ne dopuštaju onome što postoji da bivstvuje i živi, već ga odvlače u nešto što želi da bude krupno". Dragog Isusa mi, ne beše li on sam krupnost

I replike koje kao da (se), drugo jednome, prekrečavaju istim premazom i pokorica osećanja preko ogrubelosti i tvrdoće

*Zapljuskuje se, fijuče, razgoreva, uzemljuje i kriči elementarno

**Ko hoće neka slobodno otvori prozor ovoj tlapnji - nek' "uđe u hodnik i stari zidovi se zatvore oko njega"

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanneer je overstag gaat voor Jon Fosse, dan is het genieten van elk nieuw boek dat je van hem leest; zelfs als je zoals ik meteen begonnen bent bij zijn magnum opus Septology. 'Ales bij het vuur' sleept je meteen de woonkamer binnen waar Signe op haar man Asle wacht die eigenlijk al ruim 20 geleden niet meer thuis kwam na een tochtje op de Fjord met zijn te kleine roeiboot.

Signe ziet ook zichzelf bij het raam staan kijken en wachten en dan wordt Signe Asle die langs de Fjord wandelt in de regen en de wind en de duisternis, maar hij draagt de dikke warme trui die Signe voor hem breidde. Asle ziet een vuur op het Strand en als hij dichterbij komt ziet hij Ales, zijn betovergrootmoeder. Enzovoort.

In amper negentig bezwerende bladzijden passeert een kleine familiesaga de revue, waarin de Fjord, het huis, de duisternis, de boot, het vuur en verhalen over verdrinking in elkaar overvloeien, net zoals de personages en de woorden van Jon Fosse die in al hun terugkerende eenvoud veelzeggend klinken en hun effect niet missen. Ingesponnen door een mantra van taal. Overgave aan de compositie. Zo moet je het werk van de Noorse Nobelprijswinnaar wat mij betreft tegemoet treden.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentialized example of Fosse's signature super-Norwegian mythopoetics. Darkness, a disappeared man, 2002 and 1979 intermixed (and then 1897), a Thursday in November, a woman addressing her disappeared husband at the window who often spends his time on the fjord, an old house with a history, where a seven year old boy drowned long ago, where a sheep's head was burned, where a boat was burned on midsummer's night. But it's more about the language, the narrators seeming to scallop one in the other and another, naturally, dreamlike, as though it's all the initial woman's deepening thought processes, excavating the spiritual history of the old house on the fjord. Achieves a sort of sublime weirdness at times, the language rhythmic and repetitive. Can't imagine managing to read it, though -- it benefits from being played, continuing ahead even if for a moment or two I might've been dreaming as I listened.

A perfectly serviceable two-hour audiobook that I started listening to driving to the gym through morning darkness and fog, listened to at the gym while exerting and walking at 5% incline on a treadmill for 30 minutes, on the drive home on a gray day, and then while organizing a room filled with crap so we can pull up the carpet after the walls are painted.

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the world of Jon Fosse the reader is either seduced by the merry- go- round of repetition and rhythm or for no particular reason there is a neurological wiring that when read connects with the words.

Aliss At The Fire is a hallucinatory account of a woman living in the frosted land of Norway whose husband goes out at night and unexplainably does not return. It has been years now but still she finds herself looking out the window at the fjord, or seeing herself do so from the bench where she lays. She watches ancestors return to this old house, watching their trials and tribulations. The house fills. This is ironic but also desperate, but also sad, in that in this frigid land there are not many human connections and those are chilled to bare necessity. Even her stable marriage of many years is marked by little said and a distance that lacks measure. She is alone and without her husband she must fill this empty house, this empty self, with those dating into the far past, while she waits.

Fosse again, with his spare prose renders a human pain so universal and so bitter. I am glad I read this novella and being shown how far written words can expand experience.