My favorite book of 2023 so far.
The Unseen tells the story of the family that lives alone on Barroy Island. The book details everyday life for the family who lives a difficult, hardworking existence. It spans quite a few years and not much really happens except that a lot does happen. I can really enjoy books like this that hold my interest despite being day to day life, (The Miss Read Fairacre and Thrush Green series are like that except such a different life than this. )
In my opinion, there is a lot that is Unseen in this book. I almost wanted to start reading it again as soon as I finished as I feel like I missed a lot. A work of genius. Brilliant. ( )

What is the meaning of this novel's enigmatic title? For me, "The Unseen" are the book's protagonists, the Barrøys, who own and live on one of the tiny, remote islands off the coast of Norway - aptly named Barrøy. When the novel starts, the Barrøys are old widower Martin, his son Hans (who has recently assumed the mantle of "head of the family"), Hans's wife Maria, their toddler daughter Ingrid and Hans's sister Barbro, who is "not quite there". "The Unseen" follows the fate of the Barrøys over roughly three decades. This might make it sound like a "family saga" or even an updated "Nordic saga", except that, instead of epic battles against gods and monsters, we witness the Barrøys' daily challenges as they toil to eke out a living from the island's soil and the surrounding sea.

From hints throughout the book, we get the feel that the novel is set roughly a hundred years ago, but the story it relates has a feeling of timelessness, an eternity marked by the recurring seasons. The sun rises and sets. The years roll by. Storms rage, wreak havoc and recede. Children are born. So are lambs. Old men die. So do cows. There are brushes with death - the sea sustains life but it can also take it away. The surrounding world tries to stake its claim over the island, as when there is an insistence that Barrøy be put on the milk route, or when the price of Barrøy's produce is determined by the Mainland's fickle rules of supply and demand. But Barrøy lives on in splendid isolation as a new generation of Barrøys proudly continues the family traditions.

The novel's language, as rendered in the joint translation by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, is poetic yet lean and blunt. There are plenty of pages of nature writing, but nowhere does it become florid or overly sentimental. Use of dialogue is spare, which is a good thing as the thick dialect of the islanders is conveyed in a dense form of English (I wonder if it is an invented form of speech or based on an actual dialect).

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that The Unseen became a bestseller in Jacobsen's native Norway. It's a striking novel, but no page-turner. Its beauty is as austere as light refracted through a glacier. And just as memorable.


An ebook version of the novel was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review ( )

Op een windstille dag in juli stijgt de rook loodrecht op naar de hemel.

C’est peut-être un jeu de mot facile, mai ce livre est presque invisible. Bien sûr, le titre fait référence aux personnages, des gens de peu, qui vivent sur des îles isolées et qui sont donc invisibles dans l’histoire et dans la géographie. Mais pour dire ces invisibles, Roy Jacobsen utilise une écriture qui est elle-même presque invisible, tant elle est discrète et pudique, tant elle utilise le moins pour dire le plus.
Car cette famille, dont nous partageons le quotidien pendant une dizaine d’années (pendant l’entre-deux-guerres, comme le laisse deviner le contexte car ce n’est jamais précisé), est une famille de taiseux. Il y a Hans Barrøy, avec sa femme et son unique fille Ingrid, mais aussi sa sœur et son vieux père. Des gens qui disent peu, qui y réfléchissent à plusieurs fois avant de parler, et qu’il faut savoir comprendre à demi-mot.
Et pourtant, malgré cet abord un peu abrupt, on sent les sentiments affleurer, les émotions jaillir parfois d’une manière à laquelle on ne s’attendait pas. Et j’ai aimé accompagner cette famille dans sa vie, faite de hauts et de bas, faite de décisions pas toujours simples, d’espoirs parfois minuscules et parfois hors de portée.
Avec ses chapitres qui sont autant d’instantanés dans la vie de cette famille, avec sa localisation dans le temps et dans l’espace qui n’est jamais précisée, comme si tout était un peu en suspens, Roy Jacobsen a écrit un roman tout simple, d’une écriture toute en retenue, un roman qui remplit parfaitement un des rôles que l’on attribue à la littérature, celui de nous faire vivre des vies que l’on n’aurait jamais pu imaginer sans elle. J’ai beaucoup aimé ce livre, donc, et je lirai les deux suivants, autant pour retrouver les personnages que j’ai aimés que pour retrouver la plume délicate de Roy Jacobsen, même si la lecture de ce seul tome se suffit à elle-même.

Lovely, spare prose. Historical fiction about pre-WWII live on an Island off the coast of Norway. Good exploration of family dynamics. ( )