Sinking to the depths of madness

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	• Depths (Vintage) Henning Mankell Vintage, 2008 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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A Frozen Archipelago

Much of this story is set in and among the small barren islands of the Östergötland archipelago in the Baltic off the East coast of Sweden. And the novel suits the setting, bleak and emotionally icebound, but with a curious fascination that will not let you stop reading. It is written like an archipelago too, in very short chapters (206 in 403 pages), some little more than a paragraph, with a lot of white space between them. The style is unadorned and declarative; even emotional matters are stated flatly, as facts of the moment, with little sense of movement through time. But time does inch forward between one brief chapter and the next, almost imperceptibly, like a slow drip of water, gradually eroding any sense of normality and order.

Mankell has always written simply and clearly; I enjoy his Inspector Wallander mysteries (especially THE FIFTH WOMAN) for their combination of straightforward storytelling and psychological insight, set within a realistic portrayal of contemporary Swedish life. I know I will read others in the series with pleasure, but DEPTHS is completely different. Instead of the concrete present, it takes place in an uncertain past, at the outbreak of the 1914-18 war when Sweden's neutrality was still in doubt. Instead of being rooted in cities and towns on dry land, it takes place mostly at sea, on ships or tiny rocky islands. Instead of opening to a rich social world of human beings interacting with one another, it gradually closes in to the mind of one man, obsessive, misanthropic, ultimately mad, as he gradually loses all normal contact with his fellow human beings.

The book begins in madness, a woman escaping from a mental hospital. She is soon recaptured, and we flash back to 1914 to meet her husband, Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, sane, upright, and well respected. A Swedish naval officer, he is charged with making depth soundings that will establish secret channels between offshore islands for naval vessels to use in case of war. Svartman pursues his work with obsessive professionalism; if there are strange things about him, we assume they have to do with details of his secret mission which will be revealed in due course. Only gradually do we see his obsession as part of his character, and secretiveness as his very essence. By the time he encounters a woman living alone on one of the islands, and gets drawn into a double life of secrets upon secrets, his downward spiral becomes inevitable. The poor woman of the prologue may have lost her reason, but the cause of her madness lies elsewhere.

Imagine a Dostoyevsky on downers, cooler, less complex, but with the same dogged pursuit of his protagonist as he declines into psychosis. I hated this book, but have to admire Mankell's power as a writer. Even in translation, the man is good!

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Sinking to the depths of madness

Translated from Swedish, the novel DEPTHS received international acclaim. Written by Henning Mankell, an author of extensive literary accomplishments, this latest is set in the icy Baltic between 1914 and 1916, when the Swedish navy is reappraising sea channels. It is protagonist Lars Tobiasson-Svartman's job to take depth soundings in the sea of the Swedish archipelago. The story takes a twist when on one of the rock islands (skerries) he becomes infatuated with a female recluse even though he has a wife in Stockholm. Our hydrographic engineer cannot keep separate his two loves, and the tragedy seems to be his own.
The book's 206 chapters depict a log-like brevity and a crystal clear prose. There is irony in the characters and their circumstances. They can be as surprising as the moving silt of the sea floor, at times as opaque as the white fog. Tobiasson-Svartman, in particular can fascinate, becalm, and frighten as the mood overtakes him. Mankell extends further and further the limit of a character's capacity for action and belief.

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Depths - Mankell

Mankell is a complex writer which sometimes results in complex novels such as this one. While it held my attention Depths is not the type story I look to Mankell for. I much prefer his Kurt Walander series.

henning mankell

This man is a phenomonal writer. I am 80 years old & have been an avid reader all my life. Never read anybody better. "Depths" was particularly riveting because it takes the reader into foreign lands, a time when the protaganist had an interesting contribution to make to that era. I couldn't put it down. I wish his books hit the US faster. But they have to be translated into English. Well worth the wait however. Thanks for your great service. You make my life easier.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Internationally bestselling author Henning Mankell delivers a lyrical and evocative novel about a Swedish naval engineer during World War I and his devastating plunge into obsession.

In 1914 Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is covertly measuring the depths of Swedish coastal waters. A man of discipline and obsessed with exactitude, he is more comfortable on naval vessels than he is in his loveless marriage back in Stockholm. On one of his missions, Lars discovers a feral but beautiful woman living alone on a remote island. Passion, suspicion, and violence are awakened in him and soon he is living a double life-lying to his wife and his superiors and submerging himself in a pool of deception that has devastating consequences.

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