Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Doppler: Vita con l'alce

Where to begin. A decade or two can seem such a short period… or a long one. It’s often in the looking back at what has happened in such a span of time that the length emerges. The days themselves, the wrinkles and gray hairs, the shifts in how we perceive the world - that all seems to happen so slowly as to think they are barely happening at all.

I say this because Dopper was published in 2004. A lifetime ago for the young but not so far in the distant past to me. Yet it feels more distant than my high school years. Buoyed, perhaps by cultural distance as well, set not in Canada or even North America, but in Oslo and its outskirts. I’m unsure when I developed a sense of what Scandinavia is like. For much of my life, I’ve believed it a progressive, clean, safe place, Norway and its neighbours a beacon of socialist government that supports the people who call it home.

Distance, however, shows how much has changed in society - here in Canada and across the world in Norway. Humour, stereotypes, social norms, these have all evolved. In a novel like Doppler by Erlend Loe, this feels obvious. In reading this text, I tried to bear this in mind.

We meet the narrator, Andreas, as he abandons responsibility and family to live a quiet life in the woods. There is subtle context in this action that some may overlook. This decision follows a fall, and, perhaps, a concussion. We know little of who Andreas was before he moves to the woods outside Oslo and befriends a moose. Instead as readers, our insights are limited to extolling why he shuns community.

This limited perspective leans into themes of obligation, social norms, and consumerism. Through Andreas, we can reflect on why we feel so comfortable in our lives, why we go along with it, why we’ve built a system of ownership - of the land, of goods, and homes, and comforts.

In the end, Loe examines the family dynamic, support systems, silence, nature, and how and why we manipulate those around us. All the while, it’s funny. Not funny, haha, necessarily, but witty satire, doing what satire does best: exaggerating situations, bringing Andreas’ experiences and decisions to an extreme.

A shot book, you could tuck Doppler away in an afternoon or two. The prose and English translation was not beautiful, nay that’s likely not Loe’s goal. But it made me think more than expected, so it scores a little higher than it would otherwise.

Now, to go to the forest.

Content Warnings

jarslberg's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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