A chronicle of a war in the recent past

Edvard Hoem writes the story of his parents.

Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award

Edvard Hoem
Mors og fars historie ('Mother's and Father's story')
Oktober N

By Magnus Eriksson

Norwegian reviewers have characterized Edvard Hoem's latest novel, Mors og fars historie ('Mother's and Father's story'), as a warm and emotional work. Personally, I find it difficult to see the book that way. It is true that Edvard Hoem writes about feelings, but he does it in a detached way. The feelings are there, enshrined in the story, but they do not shape his writing.

To some extent, this is connected with Edvard Hoem's language. He writes in pure and clear Nynorsk (New Norwegian, one of Norway's two official written languages). His language has a mighty resonance, but it is the resonance of a chronicle. Hoem speaks of the state of things, rather than letting it emerge gradually through the text. If the chronicle is his format, preaching is his mood. In this respect, not much has changed since his breakthrough with Kjærleikens ferjereiser (The Ferry Crossing), a Communist edificational tract posing as a novel, in 1974. Edvard Hoem may experiment with different narrative techniques and certain ambitious metatextual approaches, but the uncertainty signalled by the format is seldom followed up on the thematic level. Textual approaches that otherwise tend to bring fundamental truth-related issues to the fore remain gestures with Hoem, gestures that are an indication that he does not really know what happened. In his texts, man is never an enigma, merely an information problem.

In his latest work, Edvard Hoem writes about his parents. He starts with a question he asked his mother when he was six years old: "Mum, do you love Dad?". The little boy was puzzled by the answer his mother gave him. Perhaps it is that puzzlement that creates the entire novel. It makes him search further back in time. Starting with his own childhood, Hoem tells the story of his mother and father or, rather, their respective stories. Because the stories run parallel, until they meet and are intertwined in the concluding part of the novel.

Edvard Hoem's father was a lay preacher. He spent seven months of every year away from his family, running the family farm for the remainder of the year. Hoem's parents had been marked by the poverty of their youth and childhood. The father had seen one of his brothers die and another brother retreat into the darkness of mental illness, only to die later as a consequence of a lobotomy that went wrong. Hoem's father heard the call before he was confirmed, and having gone to Bible school, he was ready for a lifelong mission as a wandering lay preacher. But his forum was not the village chapels; he held his prayer meetings in the homes he visited.

The life of Hoem's father was hallmarked by duty and his awareness of his calling, but also by his sincere naivety and compassionate sense of humour. The latter features particularly strongly in a charming episode where the father bonds with two German soldiers over the unfathomable inflections of German verbs. The soldiers were part of the force occupying Norway, but the young preacher saw past the stereotype to the human being behind it.

Hoem's mother had a similar outlook on life. She and her twin sister were top of the class at school, but their family could not afford to educate them. They were given a twelve-week housekeeping course, however. Hoem's mother kept her certificate from the course with her 'important papers' ever after, Hoem writes, adding, "Who of us today can understand that a certificate from a housekeeping course can be so important, for someone's entire life?"

After the course, Hoem's mother met a German soldier with whom she fell in love. This was obviously highly unacceptable in Norway at the time. But like the man she would one day marry, she, too, saw past the stereotype to the man behind it, though admittedly she was deceived by this her first and perhaps greatest love.

But Edvard Hoem is not just telling the story of his parents. His comment about the certificate for the housekeeping course reflects his willingness to tell a wider tale, a more general story where the experiences of his parents reflect the collected experiences of several generations in a recent past which feels more distant today than it really is.

As a consequence, Edvard Hoem intersperses the story of his parents with historical data about the wartime life that their individual destinies are outlined against. The question is how much documentary detail Hoem has to use in order to claim a general validity. Also, to what extent can he use a documentary approach without undermining his own text? He writes as if what he is writing about is threatened by oblivion, but can this be true? Personally, I find it hard to believe. People in Norway tend to have a stronger awareness of history than people in Sweden, and surely the events of the war are still very much a living tradition? As a result it gives an officious impression when Hoem matter-of-factly relates that "Vidkun Quisling was sentenced to death and later shot at Akershus". It is also destructive for the focus of his story. On the other hand, it does go well with Edvard Hoem's narrative style, relating events rather than living them. He tells us about things that happened. He has empathy for his characters, but the way he writes is non-empathic; it is disassociated and concise in the manner of a chronicle. Hoem is telling us things he knows or has heard. And thus he matter-of-factly and soberly recreates a world that people lived in, but without the posing of philosophical and literary questions that is generally implied in this type of post-Proustian project. It is as if the problem itself does not exist. Hoem is only uncertain about things he does not know, not about things he thinks he knows. In his novel, there is a lack of respect for the human being as an enigma. When the little boy asked his mother at the start of the novel whether she loved his father, her answer was: "I wasn't exactly in love with your father when I got together with him, but I did love him for being faithful, and faithfulness is just as important as love."

The mother's answer could have provided the starting point for a more speculative but also more heartfelt meditation on the nature and ramifications of love. But unfortunately, the entire novel traces a philosophically and linguistically conflict-free path to the insight contained in that answer. Edvard Hoem writes about people, his own parents, who had the ability to see past external trappings to the real people inside. The question is whether Hoem can see the real people in his story. Or does he only see a jigsaw that needs puzzling out?

Magnus Eriksson is a literary and music critic.

Translated by English Centre/ Monica Sonck