Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse; 121 pages, Kindle Edition; Published November 2, 2022 by Fitzcarraldo Editions; ISBN: 9781804270059 (ISBN10: 1804270059); Language: English
There really is no other writer like Jon Fosse. He is an original. Yes, many writers do repeat like Fosse and digress as well, but there is something original and authentic in what he says. This is just another story hard to pin down, sometimes difficult to follow, but you get the gist. All memory is subjective and can take on a life of its own. And sometimes it is confusing.
…He must have gone out onto the fjord in his boat, but he still hasn’t come back, and she’s really worried about him, can something have happened to him? she thinks, why doesn’t he come back? but she thinks things like that all the time, she thinks, almost every day, because every day he rows out in his boat, he does, and she is almost always worried about him and thinks that now he really needs to come home, she thinks…
A story about a man and his boat, a boy and his boat, and a mother and wife and the waiting and losses sure to come. The repetition begins as remembrance of what was, of love in its many forms, and the impossibility of protecting what is held sacred and originally innocent. Fosse is a writer I can only read in small increments. But he is amazing. One of my favorites.
…and then she sees herself lie down on the bench and she puts her hands up under her sweater and up to her breasts and then she lies there and holds her breasts and then she pulls up her skirt with one hand and she pulls her hand up over her thigh and she puts her hand in between her legs, she lets her hand lie there…