The Snowman

Hi Everyone,

I’m sorry not to have been at the meeting as it sounds like it was a very interesting one. New and returning members were welcomed and the discussion was lively. Here are the excellent notes of everyone's thought provoking comments that Krysia submitted on The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. The general consensus seems to have been that this was not his best novel,though complex, it was gratuitously violent and overly dark.


Krysia’s Notes:

Dear All,

We had a very enjoyable evening at last Wednesday’s Book Club meeting. Thank you Selene for making us feel so welcome in your lovely home and thanks to everyone for contributing to a splendid supper. The meeting was well attended and it was great meeting friends that we hadn’t seen since last year. Everyone had lots to say about Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Snowman’. The opinions were very mixed; some loved it and others found it gratuitously violent and disappointing. See Kerry’s blog which will be up on http://bargabookclub.blogspot.com sometime next week.

We talked about contributions for the purchasing of books which Margaret organises. At present funds are rather low consequently we aren’t able to buy more than two books per month and therefore I can’t guarantee that you will receive the book in time for the following meeting. If you would like Margaret to order your book as opposed to buying your own please contribute either €20 for the rest of the year or alternatively a few euros per month.

At the May Book Club meeting which is to be hosted by Marijke & Pietro we will be discussing the book ‘Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’ by Helen Simonson. The June meeting will be in the garden of Palazzo Salvi (weather permitting) and we will be talking about ‘Stones From The River’ by Ursula Hegi.

I’ve received a suggestion for July’s read; The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester. Read about it on http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Becker-t.html. It was also pointed out that seeing as this year is Charles Dicken’s bi-centenary perhaps we should put him on our reading list. We might go for a Dicken’s that we know quite well like Great Expectations or David Copperfield or perhaps Dombey and Son or Little Dorrit. What do you think?

Comments:

Enjoyed the book in moments but got bogged down with red herrings being thrown in all over the place.

Loved the book but there were a few weak points e.g. after twelve years finding a murder victim in a freezer in a remote country house which hadn’t been frequented since then. Was the freezer plugged in for twelve years with no-one being there? Would the freezer have continued functioning for twelve years? And why didn’t the Police search the house properly when the victim first went missing?

Lots of hype. Jo Nesbos books are getting more and more violent because he probably writes them with TV series and movies in mind. They are carefully constructed for this purpose.

Why is there such an interest in Scandinavian literature. Is it because it is dark, violent, sombre, depressing? Reflects these times of recession and economic crisis ? (KB: Bergman comes to mind)

Too many clichés but could this be a bad translation?

The story was good, violence gratuitous, annoyed at how the reader was held in abeyance and not really let in to Harry Holes private thoughts and some of us agreed that that is when a good crime novel or thriller is really interesting and gripping i.e. when you are privy to the protagonist’s thoughts.

Scenes were set well, characters developed well and although there were disappointing moments couldn’t wait to turn the page. Thrilling!

For those who are Stieg Larsson fans, this was a disappointment. And they were expecting something much better. Unlike Laarson who focuses on the positive aspects of his protagonists Nesbo prefers the darker side.

Pulp Fiction, trashy and formulaic. The story was implausible.

This thriller didn’t thrill me.

Harry Hole is modeled on Henning Mankell’s Wallander who in my opinion is a better drawn character than Harry. Harry is an alcoholic, workaholic, a lugubrious fellow, usually monosyllabic, not particularly good looking, and very thin possibly due to the bacterial fungi found in the walls of his apartment. Women find him irresistibly sexy and young boys like his xgirlfriend’s son see him as the ultimate role model. Why?

There were three suspects before the real killer was unveiled, Harry Hole’s female colleague, the Doctor and the Magazine Editor. All of whom we knew wouldn’t be serial killers because they didn’t have the right credentials and anyway they came in around Page 350 when there were still another 200 to go.

The killer’s death instrument, an electric noose used to dismember still born cows, was used to decapitate the victims, together with a bit of slow torture before the final act and cutting up of bodies afterwards. So presumably the person they were looking for was a highly disturbed psychopath who probably had a very checkered childhood to say the least. Now Mister nice guy no-nips Mathias, alias the Snowman as it turned out. when asked why he did these terrible deeds replied ‘because my mother was a liar and a whore’. Is that all it takes to become a serial killer? I found the image of The Snowman quite eerie and also the idea of Harry’s walls being dismantled during his absence disconcerting. In fact the wall’s man was quite a good red herring I thought and a much more likely case than no-nips Mathias

I think it would make a good comedy with Jim Carey as Harry and Will Ferrell as Mathias.

From Kerry:

For general interest, here is a short list of recent fiction from prize nominations from both sides of the pond.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction nominees: (No prize awarded)

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf)

An adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13-year-old heroine wise beyond her years.

The Pale King, by the late David Foster Wallace

A posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.

The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman

Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
Anne Enright The Forgotten
Georgina Harding Painter of Silence
Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles
Cynthia Ozick Foreign Bodies
Ann Patchett State of Wonder