The unseen

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Dublin Literary Award

" An absolute masterpiece. Packed with understated emotion, stunning from beginning to end" Courttia Newland, author of A River Called Time

" A masterful and moving work of literature" Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

"Easily among the best books I have ever read" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

"A beautifully crafted novel . . . Quite simply a brilliant piece of work" Charlie Connolly, New European

"A blunt, brilliant book" Tom Graham, Financial Times


Nobody can leave an island. An island is a cosmos in a nutshell, where the stars slumber in the grass beneath the snow. But occasionally someone tries . . .

Ingrid Barrøy is born on an island that bears her name - a holdfast for a single family, their livestock, their crops, their hopes and dreams.

Her father dreams of building a quay that will connect them to the mainland, but closer ties to the wider world come at a price. Her mother has her own dreams - more children, a smaller island, a different life - and there is one question Ingrid must never ask her.

Island life is hard, a living scratched from the dirt or trawled from the sea, so when Ingrid comes of age, she is sent to the mainland to work for one of the wealthy families on the coast.

But Norway too is waking up to a wider world, a modern world that is capricious and can be cruel. Tragedy strikes, and Ingrid must fight to protect the home she thought she had left behind.

Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Jacobsen's solemn, lyrical portrait of agrarian life (after Borders), the first in a trilogy, is set on the fictional remote Norwegian island of Barrøy in the early 20th century, with the Barrøy family its sole occupants. Jacobsen guides readers through the lives of Hans Barrøy; his widowed father, Martin; unmarried younger sister, Barbro; wife, Maria; and three-year-old daughter, Ingrid, detailing the everyday toil of fishing, farming, and figuring out the next move to keep themselves afloat, as they increasingly depend on the mainland's market for their goods. Jacobsen alternates from rich descriptions of the landscape and the family's daily tasks to passages contrasting Barrøy with the mainland, first established in a scene with a visit from Pastor Johannes Malmberget, who comes to consult with Hans Barrøy about his daughter Ingrid's upcoming christening, and harbors bewilderment about the isolated family's outlook and way of life (the epigraph on Hans's mother's headstone "seems to proclaim that life is not worth living"). After the death of Martin and then Hans, the younger generation struggles to keep up with the demands of the Barrøy way of life. Shaw and Bartlett brilliantly capture Jacobsen's saga in precise prose that offers a window into each character's point of view. This moving meditation on a family's tenuous relationship with the natural world is worth a look. (Apr.)

Kirkus Book Review

Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway's rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.Ingrid Barry, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barry Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid's adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her "la-di-da" ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she'll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family's hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barry on Barry remains precarious. Changes do occur in men's and women's roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crisesa war, Sweden's financial troubleshave unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature's rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator's decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversationi.e., "Tha's goen' nohvar" for "You're going nowhere")slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barry and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.