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The Unseen

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017

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The Unseen

By: Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett - translator, Don Shaw - translator
Narrated by: Rachael Beresford
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Summary

 Barrøy Island off the North-western coast of Norway - a holdfast for a single family, their livestock, their crops, their hopes and dreams. And their fears. There is a taint passed down the Barrøy line, and Hans and Maria Barrøy fear their daughter Ingrid may be affected.

The early years of the twentieth century prove that Norway cannot stand apart from the wider world - no more than Barrøy island can remain at a remove from the rest of Norway. Hans Barrøy decides to build a quay so that his family can be properly connected to the mainland and with neighbouring islands.

In time, Ingrid is sent to serve with one of the rich families on the coast, caring for their two children. But when tragedy strikes - twice in quick succession - she finds herself responsible not only for two newly orphaned children, but for Barrøy Island itself. If they are to survive, she and the other young must learn how to tame this remote earthly paradise for themselves.

(P)2016 W F Howes Ltd©2013 Cappelen Damm AS * Europe Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sea Adventures Small Town & Rural Adventure
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Critic reviews

Even by his high standards, his magnificent new novel The Unseen is Jacobsen's finest to date, as blunt as it is subtle and is easily among the best books I have ever read. (Eileen Battersby)
A beautifully crafted novel . . . Quite simply a brilliant piece of work . . . Rendered beautifully into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is a towering achievement that would be a deserved Booker International winner. (Charlie Connolly)
A profound interrogation of freedom and fate, as well as a fascinating portrait of a vanished time, written in prose as clear and washed clean as the world after a storm. (Justine Jordan)
The subtle translation, with its invented dialect, conveys a timeless, provincial voice . . . The Unseen is a blunt, brilliant book. (Tom Graham)
A modern masterpiece . . . A central novel in Norwegian literature.
This is simply a beautiful and moving read . . . A master's hand turning the small into the great.
Roy Jacobsen at his very best . . . A fantastic novel.
Jacobsen's lyrical voice has been gorgeously translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw (Misha Hoekstra)
This beautifully atmospheric novel, set on a small island off Norway, where weather and the power of the sea shape lives, is a compelling story of one family, generations of which have lived on the island that bears the family name. (Books of the Year)
A beautiful and rich depiction of place and of family life . . . an outstanding achievement.
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I found this account of a family living on a rock in the Norwegian Sea about a century ago utterly captivating. The prose style is economical but allows itself moments of sublime beauty. By the end you care deeply about this set of survivors leading their humdrum lives, which skirt so close to madness and death.

The reading is genuinely awful. Not only is the sing-song delivery grating, it is often just plain wrong - like when a train conductor makes an announcement which is unintelligible because the words have lost their meaning through repetition. It is amazing that the many, many mistakes of emphasis weren’t corrected by the producers. Nevertheless, this short book is worth your time.

Wonderful book, dreadful rendition

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Having lived on various small islands off the North Sea, I can relate only too well to the story. Slow, endless, small, enduring, harsh, and driven, at all times, by the weather. Weather-dependent life, and death, and life, are beautifully described. Everything goes on and on and seasons pass and nothing changes, yet everything slowly moves on. The story is well read, but the narrator's tone just emphasises the monotony of their existence.

The circular turgidity of cold island life.

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The narration on this is so bad I almost stopped immediately. It sounds like one of those amateur audiobook recordings. Really peculiar and jarring narration.

This narrator has terrible pacing, and often doesn't seem to understand the words she is reading. Its almost as if she doesn't realise that you need to read ahead of the words you are speaking so you'll use the correct intonation.

She has this weird cloying lilt to her voice, using these rolled 'r's (the way she said 'Maria' is really grating). She also puts her own odd emphasis on words that don't require them.

She mispronounces all the Norwegian names and for some bizarre reason has decided that Norwegians sounds like Yorkshire from that Monty Python sketch. One character has a mysterious Spanish accent. If you can't do accents, don't do accents.

Why could they not have found a Norwegian speaker to read this? Or an actor. Or just almost any other person with a mouth.

The worst narration I have ever heard

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The narrator's tone helped the sense of slow pace, reflection about each moment. The story is rich in detail, attending to the daily lives of the islanders and their life's views. Focus on bare necessities, tools, weather, money, self sufficiency. Emotionally it sustains a tone of control, sadness, not much joy, but humbleness dealing with life as it comes. Some examples of family coming together in times of loss, blood connections, wealth passed through generatiins. It is possible to notice gender inequalities and women struggle for equality in relation to gender, age hierarchy in the family. It can help empathise with the life style of isolation and endurance. Hope, frustration. Love, hate. Dream, shattered dreams. Many contradictions and overall acceptance of what live brings.

Brings a sense of melancholy about tradition

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I found the reader really boring (sorry) abs the story was dragging too often. I might have to read it, rather than listening to it

Disappointed

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