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Summary
Summary
*Winner of the prestigious Norwegian Booksellers' Prize*
*A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection (Holiday 2011)*
A glorious evocation of a Norwegian childhood in the early sixties by an author short-listed for the 2009 Dublin IMPAC Award
Little Finn lives with his mother in an apartment in a working-class suburb of Oslo. Life is a struggle to make ends meet, but he does not mind. When his mother decides to take a lodger to help pay the bills, he watches with interest as she freshens up their small apartment with new wallpaper and a sofa paid for in installments. He befriends their new male lodger, whose television is more tempting to him than his mother would like.
When a half sister whom he never knew joins the household, Finn takes her under his wing over an everlasting summer on Håøya Island. But he can't understand why everyone thinks his new sister is so different from every other child. Nor can he fathom his mother's painful secret, one that pushes them ever farther apart. As summer comes to a close, Finn must attempt to grasp the incomprehensible adult world and his place within it.
Child Wonder is a powerful and unsentimental portrait of childhood. Roy Jacobsen, through the eyes of a child, has produced an immensely uplifting novel that shines with light and warmth.
Author Notes
Roy Jacobsen is the author of several works of fiction, most recently The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles , which was short-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Don Bartlett is the translator of Jo Nesbø, K. O. Dahl, and Pernille Rygg. Don Shaw is a teacher of Danish to foreigners and the author of a Danish-Thai dictionary.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jacobsen's (The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles) latest novel reveals a vanished way of life while rambling and indulging in nostalgic reveries, most of which are written in precious prose that strains credulity. Young Finn and his mother, Gerd, live in a small flat in a working-class suburb of Oslo. Having divorced Finn's father (who later died in a shipyard accident), Finn's mother works in a shoe shop and takes in a lodger for extra money. Kristian, a coarse but affable workman, gets the room, but not before Finn's father's second wife (a desperate drug addict) responds to the ad and leaves Finn and his mother with Finn's six-year-old half-sister, Linda (who has been drugged by her mother). As her loyal brother, Finn defends her from Kristian, the educational system, and bullies at school. The portrayal of Linda's evolving relationship with Finn and Gerd is genuinely touching and the working-class Norwegian milieu compelling, but Finn's reminiscing often becomes cloying: "our eyes just became bluer and bluer as the summer wore on, the most everlasting of all summers." If there are fans of homily encrusted stories set in Scandinavia, this will be their book. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
From the respected Norwegian novelist (The New Water, 1997, etc.), an artless trifle about the impact of a small girl on a family in Oslo.It's 1961. Finn lives with his mother Gerd in a small apartment in the projects. Fate has dealt her a number of blows. Her husband, a crane operator, divorced her. A year later, he died in an accident on the job. No widow's pension for Gerd, though, for her ex had re-married. Gerd works part-time in a shoe store; money is tight. Wallpapering the apartment means they must rent a room to a lodger. Their ad draws the attention of the second wife. She's a drug addict who intends to unload her daughter on them. So their household expands by two: the lodger Kristian, a union official, and 6-year-old Linda, Finn's half-sister. Finn is the narrator and, we gather, a little older than Linda. He's a mama's boy who often breaks into tears. Linda does not make a good first impression. She smells funny, her hair is wild and she's silent as the grave. Nonetheless Finn has a jealous fit, biting his mother and breaking windows in the building. When that passes, he becomes protective of his new sister, and bristles when Kristian asks if she's retarded. But maybe she is, or at least dyslexic. We never really know, because this episodic novel is such a muddle, ill-served by a wretched translation. Nor do we know Kristian's true character, and what is transpiring between him and Gerd, who's still battling problems from her own childhood (her father abused her). At one point she visits a mental hospital. The story ends when Linda is removed to a foster home. She was, thinks Finn, "destiny, beauty and a catastrophe." She had had, we infer, a transformative effect on Gerd and Finn, though the novel has failed to make the case.Jacobsen has a reputation. This work can only harm it.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
To Kill a Mockingbird quickly comes to mind while reading this well-wrought Norwegian best-seller that also covers a momentous period in the shared life of a brother and sister, during which she is threatened and he labors to save her. Big social ills power the threats in both books: in Mockingbird, racism; in Child Wonder, prejudices about the children of the poor and outcast. Still little enough to become inconsolable when his mother is unexpectedly out when he gets home from school, Finn is shaken further by the arrival of half-sister Linda, whose junkie mother unloads her on Finn's mother after both kids' father dies. The succeeding year teems with revelations about the initially fat, lethargic girl, which Finn grasps before anyone else and fights to make them notice successfully, but only to lose her. Jacobsen has Finn tell the story many years later in a manner that reflects how he thought as a child; this involves the occasionally challenging use of run-on sentences. More obviously artful than Mockingbird, Child Wonder is as powerful and more contemporarily relevant.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Young Finn's routine existence with his single mother in a working-class suburb of Oslo, Norway, is shaken when two new people enter their lives. First, his mother takes in a lodger, a bachelor named Kristian. Shortly thereafter, Finn's six-year-old half-sister, Linda, comes to live with them. Kristian introduces Finn to new ideas and new vocabulary-and his television attracts Finn mightily. Meanwhile, over the course of a year, including an idyllic, endless lakeside summer, Linda's presence changes Finn's relationship with and understanding of his mother forever. VERDICT Jacobsen, author of the Dublin IMPAC short-listed The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles, perfectly captures the perspective of a child who doesn't fully understand what's happening around him but knows when something's wrong. The run-on sentences convey the stream-of-consciousness of a bright and perceptive boy whose thoughts run ahead of him. While the English translation is somewhat jarringly British, the warm, subtle humor and sympathetic characters are broadly appealing and should find interested readers from teens up.-Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
