Doghead, Applehead, and Jug Ears

Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award

Morten Ramsland
Hundehoved ("Doghead")
Rosinante DK

By Annette Hougaard

Seldom has a novel been so widely discussed, so unanimously praised by the critics and so successfully sold, as Morten Ramsland's Hundehoved ("Doghead"). And it is easy enough to understand. For it is a funny, colourful, and frighteningly realistic story about three generations who have one thing in common: they feel smothered by their family. And so they all run away from each other, yet with the result that almost everything they do is determined by the influence they all have on each other.

Asger, the narrator, who returns home after several years in Amsterdam to take leave of his dying grandmother, comes face to face with his past and discovers that no longer can he run away from it, but must re-live the darkness of his childhood through adult eyes, in order to understand his fate and break free of the traumas to which he is still a prey.

The story starts right back in his grandfather's youth, where he revolts against a childhood dominated by a father who subjects his son to corporal punishment when he comes home from the sea, but, one day, has to realise that his son has grown up. For the latter finally gives as good as he gets, and subsequently leaves his home, only to return to it many years later.

Throughout the novel there is a lot of beating and shouting, and very few incidences of hugging and kissing, even though in reality that is what they are all longing for.

In spite of the impossible challenge involved in relating all the different life-stories, it is possible to pinpoint the narrator's real intention behind his story: the common bond in many of the characterisations which binds the characters together and steers their fate in the same deterministic direction.

Almost all the male characters run away because they are dominated by the fear of confronting the problems of reality, which nevertheless catch up with them in the end, and can only be solved by their facing up to them. And, more often than not, the damage is so pervasive that it is beyond anything but the most pitifully inadequate patching up.

The female characters turn in on themselves along the line, waiting for the men to return and for order to be restored. So any happy endings are precluded, and even on the last page there is no relief, but only a thin hope of survival and realisation of the way things are: "The rain fell more heavily, darkness descended, and suddenly it had all seemed to close in on us. Stinne looked at me. For a moment it looked as though she wanted to say something, but she remained silent, and again concentrated her attention on the road. We did what Daddy would have done: we drove straight home, not letting the darkness get to us".

In spite of the many unhappy life-stories, one laughs quite a lot as one reads this book, both out of despair at the incredibly unsuccessful attempts which the characters make to get closer to each other, and at the crazy turns of events - like the time when, for example, the grandchildren fool their grandfather into drinking urine, or the son's childhood, which is almost chronically spent beneath the kitchen sink, where he spends all his time drawing monsters - except for the rare occasions when he allows the children along the road to fill his outsized ears with leaves and mud, just to be allowed to play with them.

We all have our crosses to bear
The title refers to the main theme of the book. It creates suspense, and indicates the mystery which has to be cleared up before we can solve the riddle of the narrator's warped attitude to his past, and the real reason behind his fear of returning home.

It turns out that, as a boy, the narrator was partially responsible for the death of a rather corpulent aunt of his, by blocking her way out of the cellar under the stairs after she had had a stroke, brought on by a weak heart and an attack of asthma. But it is also revealed that she had had an incestuous relationship with him, and, through this, had become a monster - a ferocious dog's head - which for many years had terrified him out of his wits. This imaginary bogeyman, which his sister, Stinne, had made up several years earlier to scare him, had thus come alive in the shape of his fat aunt, who made him do unspeakable things and made him commit a crime which he has to live with for the rest of his life.

A fate like this is certainly grim and cruel, and it is not so surprising that a little boy, subjected to such traumatic things, should be scared for life. Yet, as the reader, you feel some sympathy with the fat aunt, who in her turn was betrayed by her brother whom she idolised, and   by her parents who never discovered how to deal with their underdeveloped daughter's handicap.

Still, however grotesque it may seem, as a reader one accepts that this actually was the cross our narrator has had to bear all his life - and with the multitude of unhappy existences which are portrayed in the story, from a grandfather who ends up in a concentration camp, to a sister who is raped, a father who runs off with a former flame and kills himself on a mountain climb, and many other frightening incidents - in this perspective, it may after all not be the worst fate one might imagine for anyone!

The tone in which the book is written, together with the way in which, whatever happens to the characters, they carry on their unhappy lives notwithstanding - and become whole human beings in the few brighter moments which, after all, do occur - ensures that one isn't just left with a bad taste in one's mouth, but on the contrary feels challenged to look at one's own life in a different light.

With its blend of social, psychological, and grotesque realism, Hundehoved ("Doghead") has added a new dimension to Danish family sagas.

Annette Hougaard (Marketing Economist)

Translated by Philip Edmonds