Cocktails to choke on

Bent Haller's cameo stories provide rich fare for reflection and the moral dimension for the child

By : Henning Mørch Sørensen

In veteran writer Bent Haller's latest publication Kevin Kujon og andre fortællinger (Kevin Coward and Other Stories) the focus and the stark lighting come to rest on the child and the dark side of the socialisation of close family.

The characters in the 16 short prose texts are caught between themselves as protagonists and a world around them that cannot match up to the moral and existential conflict situations or the dilemmas that humans are born into and carry within them. These are meeting points where there are very rarely obvious solutions, if indeed there are any at all. The themes are developed between the two stories that frame the collection: from Kevin, the eponymous boy of the opening story, who emerges from his self-subjugating role of coward, and through to weedy Jesper, who in the concluding story Den alvorlige vrede (The Serious Rage) gives vent to his anger when no-one will help him to find his missing teddy bear. In his understandable rage Jesper throws the cat out of the house, and the cacophonous volume of his fury extends outwards into Haller's tragi-comic grotesque farce, which in a superbly devised chain of reactions portrays his anger spiralling out of control towards a situation that is on the verge of sparking off world war three. It is not until the final section of this short story that "peace returns to reign over the whole world” when he finds his teddy and the family is allowed to see the end of the film on TV.

Between stories about cowardice and anger there are others about suicide, grief, mortal fear, peer pressure, normality, falling in love and - perhaps the most fundamental of all - the need to be accepted as you really happen to be. The narrative style is sharp and biting, with a defiant humour, often juxtaposed with a surprise parting comment that stops the flow of the story in its tracks as the writer asks the reader indirect questions. And thus there is food for reflection and for discussion.

Haller, the literary artist, still possesses that undiminished ability to pare his writing down to the bone and to give the familiar new twists in the enormously evocative area of tension between the magical and realism. The best moments of these highly condensed texts shine through thanks to Haller's skill at rendering pain and vulnerability visible; they are the very spark of life in his characters, who are well captured in the narratives with their conviction to a man that even when they stand with their backs to the wall, it is by no means certain that the wall will hold.

This article appeared in a shorter version in Danish Children's Literature 23, 2003.