A life without saying

In her new novel, Helle Helle once again demonstrates the power of her subdued discourse and the deceptive simplicity of the narrative she presents

By : Henk van der Liet

Forestillingen om et ukompliceret liv med en mand (The notion of an uncomplicated life with a man) is the fifth book by Helle Helle, and her second novel so far. Just as in Helle’s previous books, the prose in The Notion of an Uncomplicated Life with a Man is realistic and straightforward. Other recurrent features are the novel’s limited plot structure and the fact that Helle only uses a minimal amount of rather taciturn characters to constitute a narrative. And, because these characters fail to tell what really is on their minds, the focus of this fascinating and relatively short novel is directed towards the relationship between them, and what is said between the lines. Thus, The notion of an uncomplicated life with a man is about what happens between people, what they say, how they say it, and – ultimately – what their words conceal. It is this oscillating dynamics of attraction and repulsion that Helle Helle depicts in a quite simple narrative, but using a fascinating and suggestive style.

The notion of an uncomplicated life with a man is about a young couple – Susanne and Kim – and one of Susanne’s former colleagues, Ester. Susanne has had a temporary job as a cleaner in a hospital, but she later begins cleaning people’s private homes, and Kim is mostly home trying to establish himself as a writer. This means that Kim and Susanne not only work in different places their social ambitions also differ fundamentally: Kim is trying to produce something tangible and with high, lasting prestige, whereas Susanne’s disparaged occupation consists of erasing other people’s, and her own, traces, leaving nothing behind. Furthermore, Susanne is a daydreamer and one of her fantasies is about living a simple, careless middle-class life with a regular job a family and friend, a life “that goes without saying”, as she puts it herself.

After quitting her job at the hospital, Susanne meets Ester. They hardly know each other, but Ester is in trouble. She is pregnant, but has left her husband, who has been unfaithful to her. Ester asks Susanne for help, and she puts her up for the night. But this temporary arrangement turns into a longer stay, until she is rushed to hospital to give birth to a baby girl, which rounds off the story.

The novel’s first and last chapter are tied together in a circular narrative structure, and in many ways the opening scene is significant. It is loaded with expectations and contrasts; it is the day before Christmas Eve, snow is falling, and the atmosphere is peaceful and expectant. But gradually the reader discerns an undertone of dissonance and slight disharmony, surmounting in the opening chapter’s final words, suggesting that Kim lies dead in their mutual bed.

Part of the novel’s suspense is to reconstruct the chain of events up till Kim’s death. Ironically enough, Kim’s life is, in the end, just as superfluous as Susanne’s, because he hasn’t finished his book yet, and doesn’t leave anything substantial behind. Ester is, notwithstanding her problems, the only person who achieves anything at all, by giving birth to her baby.

Essential to Helle Helle’s descriptive style is her consciously oscillation between detail and overview, between the ‘blurred’ and superficial on the one hand, and surgical descriptive precision on the other. Some things are left unsaid, while others are distinctively pronounced, and that goes for the characters as well. Susanne, for example, is unable to describe the appearance of Ester’s husband, but the way in which she swings a cleaning mop is described in great detail.

As in her previous work, the relationships between men and women are characterized by trivial interferences, which, in the long run, become insurmountable problems and lead to estrangement and the breakdown of intimacy. The alienated feeling of being a stranger in one’s own life, is probably the strongest, and most original theme in all of Helle’s work, and that goes for The Notion of an Uncomplicated Life with a Man, as well.

Henk van der Liet (1956) is Professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature, University of Amsterdam.