The Hills Reply

Tarjei Vesaas's final work before his death, this episodic novel drifts between dream-like abstraction and vivid description of seemingly ordinary yet heightened scenes of the Norwegian countryside. The first story finds a young boy and his father clearing a logging road deep in snow, as their surroundings give way to an expression of power and resignation between the two. Commentary on human behavior continues to meet the quiet power of the natural world in many of the sketches: a narrator watches, enthralled by the convergence of a flock of cranes in a marsh; a girl stands in the snow, waiting for someone who does not come; a drowning man is pushed downstream, towards his eventual rescue. The more abstract vignettes rhythmically ponder questions of the uncertainty of being, Vesaas's hypnotic prose an invitation to examine the telling, and sometimes disturbing, cycles of nature. The many overlapping, semi-autobiographical sketches of The Hills Reply relate a deep appreciation for the complexity of the human condition, nature, and relationships--