Asta Olivia Nordenhof is a Danish novelist and poet. Money to Burn is the first novel is a seven part series, or septology.
Married couple Maggie and Kurt run a farm. Both have their problems. Kurt is a sometimes abusive partner, and Maggie has suffered sexual abuse with other partners, and with Kurt. In the midst of these relationship details comes the story of the burning of the Scandinavian Star passenger ferry, which killed 159 people. A real life event mired in possible financial scandal, did Kurt invest in this apparently dodgy business?
Award winning Nordenhof is also a poet, and this sensibility informs much of Money to Burn. The narrative style is fragmentary and jumpy. Readers will find it hard to get a footing, but this is perhaps the idea. The oddest thing is the sudden dropping in the middle of this short novel the Scandinavian Star ferry fire, a major disaster that occurred in 1990. No doubt how this is related to the main characters is fleshed out in a further six novels. (Nordenhof lists the novel titles to come. I don't know how many have already been written, besides the second installment The Devil Book.)
I thought Money to Burn was okay - just - and perhaps maybe, just maybe, I'd be intrigued to see how the story is developed in a second book. However, by the end of Money to Burn I was tiring of the two main characters. They were pretty unappealing.
Experimental fiction for the adventurous.
Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.
No comments:
Post a Comment