I’ve always liked Ravatn’s writing (very amusing essays and stuff), but I’ve not been entirely convinced by her novels — but apparently I’m the only one; they’ve all been great commercial successes, and have won awards and gotten very positive reviews and stuff.
So… I approached this book with some trepidation, but cautiously optimistic.
And it’s OK? I liked reading it, for the most part, but it feels awfully overstuffed. It’s a short novel, but there’s so much crammed in here — it’s a family drama; it’s a thriller; it’s a comedy; it’s a think piece on the value of literature; it’s a mystery; it’s all about fambly.
Spoilers below; don’t read if you think you’re going to read this.
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Ravatn’s favourite thing in this book is to leave things slightly unsaid — that is, characters will talk to each other, or the narrator talks to the reader, and certain things aren’t said explicitly, but left for the reader to draw their own conclusions. And every time this happened, I was “aha! here’s a mystery, so the reason she didn’t say it was because that we were supposed to understand X, which means that the truth is Y”. In a kind of mystery-writing way, which really just feels like cheating if you’re doing a “serious” novel.
So while reading this novel, there was a lot of eye rolling on my part, as Ravatn tried to make some Shocking Twists, or just Funny Twists.
(Although there was one twist I didn’t see coming.)
So… it’s fun? But again, it’s not entirely successful. And it’ll probably sell a whole bunch of copies — especially the rah rah bits about literature is bound to make bookish people feel flattered.
Doggerland (2025) by Agnes Ravatn (4.15 on Goodreads)