The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2009)

9788498384161

Sérkennileg bók og oft á tíðum skemmtileg. Minnir töluvert á sögurnar af baróninum af Münchausen og Forrest Gump. Jonas leikur sér með ólíkindafrásögn og hrífur mann oft á tíðum með sér en verður á stundum langdregin. ( )

A whimsical, comic life (both present and lifetime) story of Allan Karlsson, the titular 100 year old man, who runs away from his retirement village on the day of his 100th birthday.

There is no way that his life is ordinary or even believable, but as many reviewers have commented, but the book uses the structure used in Forrest Gump (of Forrest's life being a series of fortuitous interactions with real life people and events, and his reactions to those).

But built around that are also the adventures of Allan in the days and weeks after he runs away from his retirement village. The back cover references a suitcase of cash, a few thugs, a very friendly hot-dog stand operator, a few deaths an elephant and incompetent police force, so there are no real spoilers in that sentence.

It is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but an amusing, light hearted read.

Some further comments:

- I did not get the faded monochromatic (almost Rorschach test pictures - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test) that appear at the beginning of each chapter, until I realised that they maps which (largely) depict those areas which are most relevant to the action in that chapter. But not consistently: eg Chapter 25 alludes to the Horn of Africa, though the map has it appearing in the far bottom right of the map, rather being front and center; Chapter 29's map (which reprises Allan's decision to run away from his home in Sweden ) depicts western Europe and North Africa; the Epilogue (which references Allan's final days (for the book - there is a sequel apparently) in Bali, has a map which does not include Indonesia at all. Perhaps, the joke is on me and I have failed the Rorschach tests and they are not maps at all!

- as already mentioned, the book has the parallel stories of Allan's present and past life stories. I liked the fact that the chapters do not follow a rigid present/past/present regime nor that the chapters varied quite markedly in length. One got the impression that the author told what was appropriate and then moved on, without feeling that one had to pad out a chapter so that it had to approximate other chapters

- Allan's philosophy (adopted from his mother, page 30-31) is "that it was what is was, and that in the future whatever would be would be" which invokes not only:

the Que Sera Sera routine of Doris Day in Hitchcock's The Man who Knew Too Much;
but also Mark Rylance's character Rudolf Abel in that great movie Bridge of Sighs, in which Abel is arrested in the late 1950s New York as being a Soviet spy, who is
represented by Tom Hanks' lawyer character (James Donovan). At various stages when Abel is faced with difficult/dangerous circumstances seemingly imperturbably,
he is asked "aren't you worried/concerned?", to which Abel's response is an almost dead pan "would it help?"

- The opening scene reminded me very much of the opening scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, where Bilbo Baggins is (unlike Allan here) planning to attend his 111th birthday but to disappear mid party. Of course the reasons for wanting to run away/escape are very different but the feelings of each character (being hemmed in by surrounding circumstances/ expectations) have a number of similarities.

As already mentioned, there is apparently a sequel and a movie as to this book. I don't think I will be rushing out to find the sequel (though I have seen some reviews suggesting the sequel is at least as good as, if not better than the original). It would be interesting to see how they went about the movie, so perhaps that is one to look out for if this book took your interest.

Big Ship
25 April 2022 ( )

IF you are looking for a fun light read, this is for you. I laughed at least throughout the whole book. ( )

In German