Nineteen-year-old Filip spends his days playing football, listening to music on his Walkman and drawing, searching for something he cannot yet name. He lives in a large family house shared with his grandparents, where an old rift between his grandfather Arnstein and Arnstein’s brother Truls still governs the atmosphere. The cause appears trivial, an apple tree dropping fruit across a boundary fence, but the bitterness between the brothers speaks of something far older and deeper.
1912. With Europe on the brink of upheaval, Arnstein and Truls are sent into the forest for the summer by their stern father, determined that his sons should learn to endure hardship. Left to fend for themselves among travellers, log drivers and Forest Finns, the brothers live from the land, fishing, hunting and roaming the vast woodland. Cold and hungry, yet bound together by fierce loyalty and affection, they crown themselves the Princes of Pauper’s Pond, rulers of a world defined by freedom, imagination and shared struggle.
Until, back home, their father makes a decision that will change everything. Spanning generations, The Princes of Pauper’s Pond is a vibrant, magical and deeply affecting novel about brotherhood and belonging, about finding joy and love in the open landscape, and about those single moments that can seal a family’s fate … forever…
Lars Elling (b. 1966) is a visual artist. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries worldwide, including Oslo, Cape Town, New York and Beijing, and his work is represented in many public and private collections. He lives and works in Oslo and Elgin, South Africa. The Princes of Pauper’s Pond is his first novel.
My thoughts: Filip visits his grandfather, slowly dying from a lung complaint, in the house next door to his younger brother, who he hasn’t spoken to in years. He wants to know why these two old men have been estranged for such a long time.
As Arnstein slowly tells his grandson about the summer of 1912 and his adventures in the forest, finding mushrooms, flowers and fish to sell at the market, camping out under the stars and having adventures.
But it is something that happens that summer, something that starts the rift between the brothers, once so close they were the princes of pauper’s pond, kings of their own world.
Only when the Old Man finally dies, does Filip learn the terrible, sad story of the death of the brothers’ bond. One acted out by their wives in the neighbouring gardens – shoving apple pulp back and forth under the fence.
A moving and sad story which Filip cannot undo or repair, leaving his great-uncle the only one still carrying the tragic end of that idyllic summer.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 