New Book Review: Jon Fosse's "A Shining"

What did I just read?

I am not trying to read novels (or in this case, a novella) by Nobel prize winning authors, but somehow I keep managing to do this. I am not sure just how I came upon his name, but Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2023, whose novella, A Shining, I have just finished. I had never heard of Fosse in my life, and only came to know of him because I read somewhere that he was a convert to Catholicism (and if memory serves, also a devotee of the Latin Mass—go figure).

[A warning: most of this is going to be spoilers, though as you will see, there isn’t much to spoil.]

The plot of A Shining is simplicity itself. A man (he never reveals his name) is driving along a highway, turns left, then right, then keeps turning left and right till he finds himself on a dirt road on the edge of forest and his car gets stuck. Then he decides to walk for help and walks into the woods, where he encounters a strange, white presence, a “shining.” And that’s…pretty much it.

It is hard to give you a sense of what this very short novel (about 65 pages in my Transit Books edition) is like. Told in first person, the man who get stuck narrates the entire story in a rambling, stream of conscious style with no paragraph breaks and no quotation marks. The first ten to fifteen pages are excruciatingly dull, as the main character goes back and forth in his head over every trivial detail of his predicament, like someone with autism. Here’s a snippet just to show you what it is like:

And then I suddenly realized it had been several days, I couldn’t remember how long, since I’d last had dinner. But that’s probably how it is for all of us who live alone. It’s like a chore to make yourself dinner, yes, it’s just easier to grab whatever’s closest, a slice of bread if I have any bread in the house, and put something on it, often it’s just mayonnaise on the bread and then or three slices of lamb sausage. But is that what I should be thinking about, as if I have nothing more important to worry about. But then what should I be thinking about. But how stupid is that, asking that, thinking that. I went and got my car stuck on a forest road, far away from any people, and I can’t get it free, so that means I have more than enough to keep me busy, yes, busy is what they call it, busy getting the car unstuck. Because the car just can’t stuck how it is now. That’s obvious. So obvious that it’s just stupid to think like this. (12)

And so forth. This nearly made me put the book down and never pick it up again. But when the “shining” makes its appearance, you see why the author did this. Being alone in a forest, by himself, gives the story a very weird, subjective atmosphere, as if the boundaries between psychological and physical phenomenon have blurred. The “presence” appears first as an outline, that gradually fills with white light, and the narrator begins speaking to it, hearing a voice in response. Later, the presence leaves and is replaced by his parents, who are looking for him in the forest, and also respond to them. The narrator doesn’t say so but it feels like his parents are dead, and so this makes the story take on another dimension. Is the man dying? Hallucinating? Having a religious epiphany?

His parents then disappear, and are replaced by a man in a black suit white shirt and black tie, who stares at him intently, until the narrator realizes his parents are also there calling to him. The three of them approach him together (barefoot, for some reason), and the white presence appears behind them. His mother takes him by the hand and he goes with them, as they are all gradually enveloped by this “shining” presence, and that is how the story ends.

I do not know, dear readers, how this must sound to you, but I was riveted by the book once the story finally began. If you are someone who to whom plot is very important, this is not the book for you. It is basically all atmosphere, all style, and very little actually takes place. Though I was nearly bored to tears at the beginning, once the “shining” appeared, I read the rest of the story in one sitting before bed, so anxious was I to see how it ended.

As to what is actually happening in the story, I am pretty sure the author wants you to figure that out for yourself, as that is more pleasing to do. However, he does drop one very large hint that his faith is involved in this story. At one point, the narrator calls out to the presence, and hears this reply:

I say: who are you. The presence says: I am who I am—and I think that I’ve heard that answer before, but I can’t remember where I heard it, or maybe I just read it somewhere or another. (42)

I guess in our secular age (especially in a place like Norway), this might be the reader’s reaction too. But if you are a good papist like myself, you know exactly what this refers to: Moses and the Burning Bush. It is strange how the author just sort of drops it in there, but it fits with the character, who rambles like this the whole time.

In short, it is cleverly written, even if it is not the most engaging story I have ever read, and captures the atmosphere of someone having an encounter with the divine in a way that left a very stark impression on my mind. I will have to read more of Mr. Fosse’s work in the future. And I hope, dear readers, you may do so as well.