Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl

I bought Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl in 2011, and have been intending to read it pretty much every October since. Finally I managed to schedule it in! It needn’t be read in October, of course, but it felt too apposite to miss.

The novel was published in Danish in 1996, and translated by Anne Born four years later. Grøndahl has a long and prolific career in Holland, but only a handful of his novels have been translated into English – including the excellent Virginia, which I read not long before I bought Silence in October. That slim novel is all about regret caused by a childhood decision in wartime. Silence in October is rather a different kettle of fish.

As the novel opens, the narrator’s wife, Astrid, has just left him. He doesn’t know exactly where she is, but can trace where she has been by the credit card receipts that trail behind her. They’ve been together for more than eighteen years – ever since he was her taxi driver, as she fled her abusive husband with their young son.

This premise is almost all the action that happens in the novel. For almost 300 pages, what we witness is the unnamed (I think!) narrator’s thoughts, recollections, philosophising. We move back and forth in time, often with little warning – but equally often the memories are not dramatic, but lend a layer to the profundities that the narrator is compiling. Whether you find them profound or not may depend a lot on the mood you’re in while you read it.

It’s difficult to write about Silence in October, because it really did depend on my mood. The writing is beautiful, and Born translates in such a way that no awkwardness is ever apparent. It deserves – it requires – slow and patient reading, letting the unusual images and stumbling thoughts wash over the reader. Grøndahl is excellent at the minutiae, and bringing small moments and reflections to new, vivid life. To pick something at random from early in the book, here is when Astrid says she is leaving:

She had announced her decision in such a run-of-the-mill and offhand way in front of the mirror, as if it had been a matter of going to the cinema or visiting a woman friend, and I had allowed myself to be seduced by the naturalness of her tone. And later, in bed, when I thought she was asleep,there had been a distance in her voice as if she had already gone and was calling from a town on the other side of the world.

So, yes, I read much of Silence in October in patient appreciation, recognising Grøndahl’s ability as a prose stylist. And then there were other times – when, sensibly, I usually put the book down and picked something else up – where I had less patience. I don’t need a book to have a lot of action, but this amount of introspection is a little low in momentum. Pacy, it was not. Also – my tolerance for the self-absorption of the middle-aged, middle-class, white, male narrator wore thin at times. He is obsessed with his own thoughts, awarding them significance, whatever they are. His mindset is a bit like one you see on Twitter a great deal. I rolled my eyes when we got to the inevitable women-don’t-realise-they’re-prettier-without-make-up moment. He writes about women’s bodies a lot.

Could I really not meet a woman who thought and talked on the same frequency as myself without immediately getting ideas from the sight of her thighs just because they were lovely, and because she unwittingly exposed them to my ferocious gaze?

Of course, the author need not be the narrator. Indeed, I know from Virginia that Grøndahl can take his writing talents to a far worthier topic than the self-importance of an adulterous art critic.

I always say that the writing is more important than what is being written about. There are exceptions, of course – and you know that I will read more or less any novel about people opening a cafe – but Silence in October is a good instance where I enjoyed it despite its premise and its ‘plot’. Grøndahl is a fine writer and Born is clearly a very good translator. I look forward to read more of his novels, and hope that they’re about people I’m readier to spend time with.