M Sarki

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/75720788082/before-i-burn-a-novel-by-gaute-heivoll

Really, the music today in this Starbucks makes me want to destroy something. I am sort of stuck here as my Subaru is being worked on over at the Big O, a couple blocks away. Big job. New shocks, tire rotation, wheel alignment, oil change. You know, almost regular maintenance for an automobile with nearly 150,000 miles on it. Anyway, I ordered a mocha grande, gave them a name to call out when it was ready, and finally, fifteen minutes later, I go up to check on what could possibly be taking so long and there on the counter it sat. At least I thought it was mine. The person behind the counter said it was a mocha for somebody with my first name. I mentioned that it would have been nice if someone had informed me. The person remarked that a yell was made, but perhaps I didn't hear it. I have been back sitting here at my little square barstool table after another fifteen minutes have gone by and have yet to hear a yell out of anybody, least of all a barista, and there have been plenty of customers since me, so I think the rather grumpy employee was lying to me. Just like Gaute Heivoll may have been lying to me as well. But it doesn't matter to me if Gaute was telling me a tale because this book was supposed to be a work of fiction anyway. I am not at all positive that these related burns actually happened and do not really care. Gaute made them real enough for me.

The book is actually heart-wrenching with his personal memoir content regarding his dying dad and his own struggle over what to do with his life. The narrator has the same name as Gaute Heivoll so I suppose we can imagine this is a true story with some made-up shit in it. There is plenty of pain to go around the bowl and get it going with a very good spin. We get to know all the neighbors and their personal crosses they bear. And somehow we are getting to at least the surface personality of the criminal who is never revealed until late in the book, but you know all along who it is and I think this is also on purpose. I am of the opinion that Gaute Hovill knows exactly what he is doing, as in his being a supremely gifted writer with a masterly plan.

Something tells me this novel is a parallel bit about being an only child and how the pressures to make something of oneself might ignite a burn that can become unmanageable. It may be that a mental illness or dis-ease develops and exacerbates an already difficult situation. The reader is kept from knowing what exactly happened to the most tragic character of all the many collected in this book. It is never made clear what happened to this once kind and considerate person that fueled his eventual becoming a dangerous pyromaniac. Parents can sometimes cause more harm than good, and the damage is usually done in the spirit of love and adoration. I know firsthand what it is like to love someone too much and to care even a bit too exorbitantly for their happiness. It is quite hard to let go. To live and let live. But one must, or else perhaps have to live with possibly unseemly consequences.

In the end I realized this was a book of memory, about a certain time spent in the history of a small town called Finsland. A story about a boy who lost even himself, who hung onto a memory of his own perfection, a boy who even his parents no longer knew, and the journey some of us must make between a past time remembered and a life lost in its clouding over. It is obvious to me that Gaute Hovill is a born poet as there are enough beautiful sentences to prove his gift for stringing along words. But it is one of the saddest books I have ever read, and it is simply because of this: There is little in its completion that might redeem the lives that seem to still be lost grappling out in its frontier. But isn't that the truth.