A SHINING by Jon Fosse

Translated by Damion Searls

Those long put off by the thought of Jon Fosse’s many-hundred-page sentences might find a way in to the Nobel newbie’s work with the rat-a-tat-tat staccato of this confounding little oddity. Beware the ruse, though. A Shining has the same seductive melody of his more expansive work, and will similarly lull you in to humming its hypnotic incantation.

The story is simple enough. A man gets lost while driving in a forest. He gets out of his car as snow and wind whips around him. He walks aimlessly into the trees. Suddenly, he is confronted by an apparition, a glowing mass, undefined, unidentifiable. Its comes closer. Almost consumes him. And then it’s gone. In trying to find it again, he meets his parents and a strange man in a black suit. And then they, too, disappear.

Like much of Fosse’s work, A Shining is steeped in deeply religious and spiritual symbolism. I also felt the strong influence of Max Frisch - were these the visions of a man in his death throes? And then there was the inescapable allusion to that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns glows from radioactive exposure. But that’s too lowbrow for Fosse. See? Something for everyone!

A Shining by Jon Fosse (Tr. Damion Searls)
Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023
48 pages