The Summer of Drowning by John Burnside: a review

The Summer of Drowning by John Burnside is an atmospheric novel set on an island near Tromso in the north of Norway in the arctic circle. It narrates the events of one summer as seen through the eyes of Liv then aged eighteen. It is written from her viewpoint ten years later, looking back to interpret the events of that summer.


I have visited Norway several times will go again this summer so was interested to read a novel set in the land of the midnight sun. It started out as a simple mystery story involving the odd characters who choose to live in such an extremely remote location. But half way through the narrative I became aware that it was not all as it should be. Liv's narrative shows increasing signs of paranoia and other symptoms of mental illness. She is a cold unfeeling person and has been dominated by her strange and talented, reclusive mother. Her attitude to life is derived to some extent from the white light of the night as Burnside describes how the lack of darkness affects all the people who live at these latitudes.


The sense of paranoia increased as the book reached its climax and Liv's account ceases to make sense on a rational level. She starts reinterpreting events along the lines of the ancient saga of the Huldra, a dangerous spirit who appears in the form of a young woman to tempt men to their death. The climax comes and she collapses with a breakdown.


It is a book about madness that is disturbing and provocative. It leaves you ultimately wondering what was it all about and what really happened? 


Possible spoiler Alert.  My understanding of the ambiguous ending is that Liv was a psychopath - evidenced by her total lack of emotional involvement with any other human being. Maia wasn't a real person. Maia was the murderous alter ego living in her imagination. Was Liv schizophrenic? Did she become the huldra in her mind through an unhealthy interest in the dark folk tales and was she responsible for the deaths of the four men who disappeared? Her mother perhaps recognised this serious mental disturbance in Liv when she was painting her and for this reason stopped painting portraits.