I have to admit to buying The Unseen because of its cover. I’m glad I did, because before I was halfway through, I was ordering the second book in the Barrøy trilogy. Although I’m not reading the shortlist for the Booker International prize, this novel was shortlisted for it.

After reading much of Halldor Laxson’s Independent People under the belief that it was describing Icelandic life in Medieval times, only to find out it was set in the 20th century, I don’t make assumptions about the times in which novels are set anymore. The Unseen describes a similarly primitive existence, with not many hints to its timeframe, but I finally figured out it begins a few years before World War I.

Ingrid’s family lives on Barrøy, one in an archipelago of many small islands in northern Norway. Each island is occupied by one family, and although the islands are in sight of each other, visits are rare, so the family has to be fairly self-sufficient.

Ingrid’s father, Hans, works hard and dreams of a different life for his family. His immediate dream is for a quay to make it easier for boats to land, so that when Uncle Erling arrives with his large fishing boat each January to pick up Hans for the yearly fishing, he can get off the boat. The novel relates the everyday events of the family’s life—the four-month fishing trips, the haying and fish drying in summer, milking cows, moving livestock from one small island to another for grazing, collecting and cleaning down from the eider ducks. And the big events—births, deaths, expansions and contractions of the residents of the islands.

Written in spare, crystalline prose with an occasionally very dry humor, The Unseen is fascinating. I loved this novel. And here I am reading about islands again.

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