Why a Booktrail?
Would you take voluntary exile in a remote farmhouse, an old man and life in an isolated fjord
The Bird Tribunal
What you need to know before your trail
TV presenter Allis Hagtorn leaves her partner and her job to take voluntary exile in a remote house on an isolated fjord. But her new job as housekeeper and gardener is not all that it seems, and her silent, surly employer, 44-year-old Sigurd Bagge, is not the old man she expected.
As they await the return of his wife from her travels, their silent, uneasy encounters develop into a chilling, obsessive relationship, and it becomes clear that atonement for past sins may not be enough.
Travel Guide
The landscape of The Bird Tribunal is as remote and lonely as the man who lives in the old house. This landscape is sparse, remote, distant and cold. Empty, bare and cold. Although there is still beauty in this land:
“My gaze swept out across the water, We had almost reached the middle of the fjord. It was a long way to land, the house no more than a speck on the horizon. The sky was pale yellow and light blue, the fjord inconceivably , sparklingly beautiful”
For the most part the landscape promotes gloominess – there are fjords, valleys, hidden and inaccessible areas, ravines and desolate landscapes. Everything is flat, people are cut off and are dependent on the weather more than most. Survival here is only for the most hardy. And perfect for those wanting to hide.
Booktrailer Review
Susan @thebooktrailer
This is a haunting melody of a novel. Strangely compelling, yet deeply unusual in style and substance. This is a new stule of Nordic Noir for me – quite an eerie read that left me thinking a great deal about the novel I’d just been immersed into. It felt like a dip in an icy fjord. I stood at the edge of the book and dipped in my toes for a little while before fully immersing myself into it – but what a reward! – and a shock in more ways than one but I want to go back in and do it all again.
Allis is an unforgettable character and Sigurd eccentric and very very strange at the same time. There is a real sense of gothic eerie shadows to this novel and Rosie Hedger has done one brilliant job as the translator. This must have been tricky to translate in places but it reads like a charm.
I think the magic of this novel is not really knowing how to take it in parts and to have it as a literary enigma of sorts. Only Allis Hagtorn and Sigurd Bagge really have the answers. This is a tense relationship that I felt I was only seeing the parts they wanted me to see – but how that kept me pressing my nose to the window!
Ice ice fiction at its chilling, remote and claustrophobic best.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: The Bird Tribunal
Author/ Guide: Agnes Ravatn Destination: Norway Departure Time: 2000s
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