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We, the Drowned (2006)

by Carsten Jensen

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,5084811,886 (4.14)103
Follows a century in the port town of Marstal on an island off the coast of Denmark, whose citizens' lives are indelibly shaped by forces ranging from wars and shipwrecks to taboo survival practices and forbidden passions.
  1. 20
    The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Jannes)
    Jannes: Proulx focuses on one particular and personal fate, Jensen writes about a whole town in the voice of a vague, collective "we". The former places her story in modern-day Newfoundland, the later in 19th and early 20th century Denmark. What they have in common is the ever-present sea, its influence and demands, and how the people that relies on if for sustenance has learned to accept its whims and live with the consequences of a life at sea.… (more)
  2. 10
    Ahab's Wife or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund (spiphany)
  3. 00
    In the Wake by Per Petterson (Limelite)
    Limelite: Norwegian writer; tragedy at sea but psychodrama, not saga. While an internal novel without the brutality of war, the atmosphere of Scandinavian love-hate relationship with cold seas is here.
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» See also 103 mentions

English (37)  Swedish (2)  German (2)  Spanish (2)  Danish (2)  Dutch (1)  French (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (48)
Showing 1-5 of 37 (next | show all)
Interesting but realistically brutal ( )
  cspiwak | Mar 6, 2024 |
We'll never be a family, Albert thought. We're just the wreckage of other families.

What a stunning, heartbreaking, life-affirming, devastating work. We, The Drowned covers 100 years in the life of a Danish town, Marstal, through the sailors and soldiers and their families. Jensen's prose is vivid and poetic, rarely as "simple" as the misguided reviews on the back of the cover say (even if they mean well by it), and always insightful. His characters walk the tightrope of magic realism without ever crossing over into that genre. He renders the complex relationship all lifelong coast-dwellers have with the ocean, immaculately clear.

This book is a very dense tome. At 700 pages, it uses every one of those pages to tease out heavy strands of story and character, so it's definitely not a light read. But We, the Drowned is an immensely rewarding one. There are grand set-pieces - the dehydrated butterflies spring to mind, or the early, strangely optimistic tales of a POW camp - but these are contrasted with simple character tales that elevate the mundane drama above the global events occurring around the characters.

For me, a few of the character revelations toward the end felt a tad obvious - the lead female character develops a highly unpleasant but completely understandable goal, and her late realisation of what she's been doing with her life feels a little forced - but the sheer force of Jensen's skill overwhelms any qualms. A beauty of a book, and a beast of a book, too. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
It started off strong. I really liked Laurids, and the description of the battle and the aftermath. I also liked how the author used the collective "we", it was a good writing style. But chapter 2, where it moves on to the town's kids, slowed way down and I lost interest. It probably picks back up but I don't have the energy to scan the book, looking for it to get good again.
  blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |
I rate up (or down) from 3 stars, but I wish I could give this a perfectly neutral 2.5, for the balance between what I liked and did not. The first 100 pages, I was sustained only by my interest in the first person plural voice. Around 130 a narrative picks up that held me for another 100 or so; then a flat bit, some terribly annoying men, a few chapters of searching for my narrator, some promising bits towards the end, and who knows what else. Here at the end I feel like I've liked it enough, but I remember those earlier phases. Too many things (voice, narrative) needed to be more developed - in any direction, but more committed to that direction. Still I love my Danes and my history and my sea narratives, so I'm rounding up to 3. ( )
  Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |
Groots en meeslepend.

Marstal, een klein stadje op het eilandje Ærø in Denemarken. Ooit een vracht- en vissershaven om rekening mee te houden. Over de hele wereld kwamen deze Marstallers. Beroemd en berucht waren ze om hun zeilschepen, om hun uithoudingsvermogen en om hun zeemans capaciteiten.
Dit epos, odyssee, coming-of-age, liefdes-, oorlogs-, zeemans-, schelmen en nog-veel-meer verhaal, gaat over deze mannen en vrouwen uit dit gehuchtje en een deel van de wereldgeschiedenis waar ze aan deel hebben genomen. Het is fictief maar is een hommage aan de mensen die er leefden en verhalen mee naar huis brachten.
En het is een hommage waar je aan verslingerd raakt! Zilte tranen heb ik gehuild en gelachen heb ik als een dronken zeeman! En dat terwijl ik verder helemaal niets heb met zeemansverhalen en nog nooit op Ærø ben geweest.
Ik heb het in het Deens gelezen (Vi, de druknede). Je zou het ook in het Engels kunnen lezen:
We, the drowned. Het boek is gekozen ( in 2010) door de Denen als het beste boek van de afgelopen 10 jaar


( )
  MarianneBrix | May 27, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 37 (next | show all)
When was the last time you relished sitting down with a 678-page Danish novel? "We, the Drowned" might just be too much book to tote to the beach next summer, but it's powerful reading for a long winter's night. For many nights, in fact.
 
"Wir Ertrunkenen" schöpft aus der langen Liste berühmter Seefahrer- und Meeresromane, wir erkennen Elemente aus Herman Melvilles "Moby Dick", aus Stevensons und Joseph Conrads Romanen, stilistisch erinnert er zuweilen an Frank Schätzings "Der Schwarm". Der Roman erfüllt jeden Jungentraum von Abenteuern aus echtem Seemannsgarn, er bietet exotische Länder, Kannibalen und Schrumpfköpfe, Schiffskatastrophen und Kriegsgräuel, prügelnde Lehrer aus Zeiten, die keiner mehr kennt, eine verwirrende erste Liebe und ein unverhofftes Wiedersehen und nicht zuletzt die Hassliebe einer verbitterten Mutter - daheim herrscht die Melodramatik, auf See die reinste Action. Da Carsten Jensen ein ungemein gewiefter Autor ist und die Kunst des dramatischen Pathos beherrscht, das dem Leser den Atem verschlägt, ist dieses Buch in all seiner Schönheit und all seinem Kitsch der Inbegriff eines Schmökers, es ist der Schmöker dieses Herbstes.
 
Seagoing legends of Scandinavia ...The translation is, in the main, finely wrought, preserving both the elegiac lyricism and straightforward, sometimes violent energies of the book. I do wish, however, that American translators (or their publishers) were not so anxious about idioms. To have a young Danish sailor, in 1845, refer to “freezing my butt off” bounces this reader out of a believable book....That said, Jensen’s talent as a storyteller shines through. We, the Drowned is a huge achievement. A first novel, it’s such a large book that I hope the author has more to say. Whatever may follow, I am grateful, engaged and moved by what he has said here.

 
We, the Drowned makes us appreciate – in vivid detail – how our present lives in commercially successful societies at peace with each other rest even now on horrific exploitation of the inarticulate, often compelled to commit acts whose savage violence we would rather forget.

In this lies the book's principal strength....Every day gives us cause for fear and sorrow but, as on the celebratory one with which the novel concludes, we can defy them by "dancing with the drowned" because "they were us".

 

» Add other authors (12 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Carsten Jensenprimary authorall editionscalculated
Andersson, LeoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Barslund, CharlotteTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gnaedig, AlainTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hervieu, HélèneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ryder, EmmaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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For Lizzie, the love of my life
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Many years ago there lived a man called Laurids Madsen, who went up to Heaven and came down again, thanks to his boots.
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Follows a century in the port town of Marstal on an island off the coast of Denmark, whose citizens' lives are indelibly shaped by forces ranging from wars and shipwrecks to taboo survival practices and forbidden passions.

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