To Be Read...

Fogbound in Copenhagen

While everyone else was watching The Killing II , I was stranded in Copenhagen (flights cancelled due to fog).  Here's Hans Christian Anderson peering through the gloom towards Tivoli. In his hand is a book, to which someone has rather wittily added a sticker of bright yellow rubber duck...

Carl Mørck's Denmark

Jussi Adler-Olsen's Carl Mørck lives on the Rønneholt estate, in Allerød, about 20 miles north northwest of Copenhagen.

I don't have the book with me but at one point in Mercy, I am sure he mentions a car park on Magnolievagen, which is near his house. Forget the gloomy, threatening city of The Killing;  in the (admittedly unlikely) event of Mørck cycling home from Copenhagen he would go through some beautiful countryside, thick woods and rolling, golden fields.   

• See also Carl Mørck's Copenhagen

Carl Mørck's Copenhagen

Down these mean streets Carl Mørck must walk... but following his trail is none too easy.

Copenhagen features prominently in Jussi Adler-Olsen's Mercy, but the author is not as given to precise locations as, say, Henning Mankell, who makes following one step behind Kurt Wallander relatively easy.

Here are some guesses, anyway...

Merete Lyngaard, the captive to whom no mercy is shown, is a member of the Danish parliament, the Folketing:

She parks her small blue Audi in Christiansberg car park:

Merete raised her eyes to look at the Royal Arsenal Museum (Tøjhus Museum), where a man in a white trench coat was photographing the building. Did he just snap a picture of her? 

The extraordinary thing about these pictures, for an English visitor, is the apparant lack of security. The woman on the door to the  Folketing who smilingly explained that only MPs and their guests could use the Snapstinget restaurant where Merete bumps into Daniel Hale, was the only person in uniform I saw; rather a stark contrast to fortress Downing Street, and a little surprising in light of the Mohammed cartoons.

Mørck lives on the Rønneholt estate in Allerød, about 20 miles north northwest of Copenhagen.

Armager, where Mørck is shot is a district to the south east of Copenhagen, on the way to the airport, and Vjalby Park, where the cyclist was murdered is to the west of the city, near the zoo.

Doghead, by Morten Ramsland

 
 
Translated by Tiina Nunnally, (2006) Black Swan

The title didn't grab me. Nor did the prominent front cover endorsement: "Gritty, powerful and engaging" Daily Express.

The back cover didn't help much: Naughty Boys. Dirty Secrets. Mad Dogs.

"In the Eriksson family, childhood is an unsettling experience, full of crude and disturbing rites..."

On the other hand, it was translated by Tiina Nunnally, who is not only very skilled at her task but also is also a fine judge of author. Östergren, Jungstedt, Enquist, Birkegaard; I couldn't remember her letting me down before.

And, anyway, this was the last stop in my trawl of Copenhagen bookshops and the alternative was a £20 Miss Smilla. So OK, buy it.    

The family saga begins in Bergen, but travel - running away - is in the Eriksson blood, and much of the narrative unfolds in a strange, alien Denmark.  Here, Mad Askild, a painter, engineer and drunkard, a smuggler, black marketeer and concentration camp survivor, dominates an unforgettable family.

As a child he would stand on the dock at Bergen waiting for his sailor father to return after months at sea.

The reunion always filled him with equal parts of terror and joy, because after the homecoming dinner, his mother would read aloud from the black book in which all of Askild's misdeeds had been neatly written down. Then his father would take the strap out of the cupboard to give Askild all the beatings that had been stored up for several months.

"Back then the world was real," he says.      

After this, after Buchenwald, it is perhaps understandable that he will go on to treat his wife Bjork and his sons Applehead and Jug Ears  dreadfully badly. He will drink, and under the influence of jazz and Cubism, continually lose his job as a ship designer.

He will tell the story of his life, with paintings including New Life in the Old Privy, depicting the arrival of first son, Applehead, who was not, in fact, gas in the stomach.  

Brother Jug Ears will be schooled by a deputy head, who punishes pupils by making them "kiss the ball" of a machine which generates static electricity by the cranking of a handle  - with deadly results. Jug Ears will try to impress the girl next door by cycling blindfold through town, and come undne when she discovers  underwear  stolen - lovingly - from her washing line. For two weeks she ignores him, then posts a sign in her window: "What exactly are you doing with my mother's knickers?"

We follow Askild and Bjork to the end of their lives, she spending her last days in bed, fortified only by tin cans of fresh air posted from Bergen by son Applehead.

Apologies. This is a very poor summary of splendid book.  It is dark, even brutal in parts, but it is also very funny, very warm, moving... and engaging.

A bit like the blurb from the Daily Express, in fact