Unformed Landscape
If Albert Camus had lived in an age when people in remote Norwegian fishing villages had e-mail, he might have written a novel like this. Kathrine, a customs inspector, abandons husband and son, because she's unsure whether she has "missed anything or not." In Paris and beyond, she connects with a series of men, and, after finding the world much as she expected (a garden café in Paris looks "the way a Norwegian who has never seen a garden café might imagine one to look"), returns to her fjord in Finnmark. In Stamm's portrait, a scenario that could have been half-baked captures what seems a particularly Nordic view of adult life: austere pragmatism mixed with mordant wit.Copyright © 2005The New Yorker--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.