Every now and then, one encounters what feels like a perfect little novel: a beautifully written, compelling distillation of love and life. For instance, there’s Ron Rash’s The Caretaker—and now, Frode Grytten’s The Ferryman and His Wife. This slight Norwegian novel is unforgettable and surprising, packed with remarkable characterizations and superbly translated into English by Alison McCullough.
Nils Vik has lived his entire life in one place, working as a ferryman in a Norwegian fjord, marrying and raising two daughters. He began ferrying as a boy at his father’s side and later took over the trade, converting his sailboat by adding a cabin and a wheelhouse and eventually naming it Marta after his wife. One morning, on “a peaceful, rainy day in November,” Nils—now a widower—wakes up knowing that it’s his last day on Earth. “What will he write on the logbook’s last page?” he wonders.
Nils has always been observant; he’s filled 25 or so small blue notebooks with details of his journeys. Today, however, like Charon on the River Styx, his passengers are the souls of the dead who rode his ferry in life. As Nils encounters departed souls, readers get a bird’s-eye view of his existence from the nugget-like anecdotes of his interactions with “all kinds of people”—a priest, a renegade teenage boy denigrated by his father, a convict returning from prison, Miss Norway 1966, the prime minister, actor Edward G. Robinson. Even his long dead beloved dog, Luna, is aboard, acting as his conversational counterpart.
This is far from a mere sentimental saga, however. Its often-subtle stories are both beautiful and brutal, including a betrayal by the man Nils thought was his best friend. As the title indicates, The Ferryman and His Wife also chronicles a marriage, one that has included fierce love as well as serious challenges, which are both detailed with bare-bones honesty. The fjord itself becomes a notable presence: After an American magazine declares it “the world’s most beautiful travel destination,” city folk begin buying up properties as vacation homes, forever changing the character of Nils’ beloved landscape.
In exquisitely crafted chapters, The Ferryman and His Wife encapsulates a vanishing lifestyle and life. As Nils puts it, he’s lived “long enough to discover what air and sea and earth and hate and love are, and then say thank you and farewell.”
