I really love Jon Fosse’s writing. Septology is one of my very favourite contemporary books, strange, repetitive but hypnotic. When @bobsphere mentioned this new and very tiny book by Fosse I had to buy it. And I love it! It is about a man who finds himself lost in a wood on a bitter cold night during a snow fall. In that it is very Dantesque. Dante says:
‘ Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost’.
I think the theme of the Divine Comedy is present to the end but in a very obscure and dreamlike way.
It will take a few readings but is it about a dying man? I think so. Or it could be about a man emerging into a new found meaning in his life. Or both?
As you read you think the short and repetitive sentences would be boring if it was handled by anyone else, but Fosse pulls it off. He was very deserving of that Nobel prize I think.