Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell & published 2021

This is a collection of four stories, all populated with disaffected characters in surreal situations. Each story takes place in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar world and gives little explanation or details of it. They have an absurdist style, things change inexplicably, personal philosophies are spewed forth randomly. The fate of the narrator is unresolved because that’s not the point, it is unsettling the reader that is, and Scavenius does a very good job of that.

The title story is, by some way, the strongest of the collection. It begins in an innocuous way, though soon becomes worrying, and shortly after, harrowing. A family tries to maintain a semblance of normality while a neo-fascist revolution seems to be raging outside. One of the daughters has moved to live in the cellar. The wheelchair-bound narrator attempts to keep the peace with her parents by agreeing with their extreme views, while secretly communicating with her sister by passing notes and food through a gap in the wall to the cellar, though she herself is imprisoned in the house. Meanwhile, the sinister ‘Machine’ advances slowly and terribly towards them.

Notpla’s House has the potential to be the most terrifying, though Scavenius’s style, she doesn’t seem to want an ending, means it doesn’t fulfil its promise. It is narrated by a woman who is running from something, but she cannot remember what. Some kind of epidmeic is devastating the country, with an allusion to unpunished crimes of the past. Suddenly the landscape and the people in it can shift, so the narrator lurches from one precarious scenario to another, never fully understanding what is happening to her or expected of her.

I really enjoyed what I read here, and was surprised and disappointed to see that none of her other books are yet available as English translations. She is a contemporary Danish writer with a unique style to watch out for; the title story is excellent, and the others have plenty of potential. She seems the sort of writer Tartarus publishers would be interested in.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5