"If every baby is a perfect miracle, then life is basically a journey of depravity."
"On this day, the sky began to drift snow. At eleven o'clock in the morning, large snowflakes fell from the colorless sky, invading the fields, courtyards, gardens, and meadows of the Rumerick district, like a white army from outer space...
Reading Yu Neisbo's novel in the middle of summer is a particularly relieving thing, and "The Snowman" is particularly effective — all the stories take place in the long winters of Oslo and Bergen in Norway, and the first snow of each winter, there will be an unclaimed snowman in the snow, and each snowman will hint at a murder that has already happened.
This "yeti" terrier seems a little familiar? That's right, two years ago, the critically acclaimed web series "Undocumented Crimes" borrowed from Yu Nesbo's creativity, and there is always a snowman in the murder scene, and the murderer who is at large has also been given the code name "Snowman".
It can be seen that "Snowman" is indeed a very popular novel, or it is an important work that pushes You Nesbo to the international market.
By all accounts, Yu Nesbo is the only speculative novelist I've read in its entirety. At first, what attracted me was not his work, but his identity as a "slash youth" that flourished in Northern Europe. The prolific writer dreamed of becoming a footballer and played in the Norwegian First Division for a while, with the goal of joining the Premier League tottenham Hotspur. After bidding farewell to the green field due to injury, he made up for cultural classes and entered the university to study economic management. After graduation, he was not willing to work as a financial white-collar worker in oslo's lattice workstation, and formed a band with friends, named Di Derre. Half luck, half strength, Di Derre went viral in Norway and Yu Nesbo became a rock star overnight. After being an idol for a few days, he felt bored again, so he gave himself a long vacation. On a long journey from Oslo to Australia, he was inspired to write the next outline of his novel. In 1997, this outline became Yu Neisbo's debut film, Batman. He is probably satisfied with his status as a "writer", at least so far there is no sign of changing careers.
Yu · Nesbo
For a long time, Yu Nisbo wrote a novel almost every two years, and The Snowman, published in 2007, was his seventh novel.
Before exploring The Snowman and the style of the writer, I would like to share a favorite movie. Rather than off-topic, this story in Oslo, Norway, may give a better understanding of Yu Neisbo's lonely, gloomy Nordics, and the eternally despondent male protagonist, Officer Harry Holler.
Oslo, 31.August, directed by Norwegian Joachim Tyre, doesn't tell a big deal about the story, and the male protagonist of the film is a 34-year-old addict named Anders, who received an interview from a newspaper after 10 months of drug treatment. So he got his own day through the interview.
"Oslo, August 31" is about what happened on this day, this former literary young man with a good family returned to life, he found a friend to tell the idea of self-severance, tried to contact his sister, showed kindness to his former lover, and never appeared on the party. The girl I knew at the party rode with him and walked through deserted streets where the sky was gray-blue. In the end, family, friendship and love ignored him, and the encounter with the beautiful girl failed to hold him back, and the boredom and hopelessness of life invaded the bone marrow, and he finally chose to end his life.
Stills from Oslo, August 31
Anders recounts everything his parents and Norway had given him: "She was tolerant of drug use, democracy was the best option, and they respected my privacy, perhaps too much. They taught me that religion is weak, and I don't know if I agree. They never taught me to cook or build a relationship, but they seemed happy. They never told me how friendships disappeared until they became strangers. They allowed me to be picky about food. She said I could do what I wanted to be, decide who I wanted to be, who I wanted to love, and where I wanted to live. They will always help me, and they will be more strict with my sister than I am. Anders died in Nordic freedom, in gray-blue silence.
The film takes the camera towards the cold streets and idle life of Oslo, while also conveying the loneliness and emptiness behind it to the audience.
Snowman and all of Yu Nesbo's novels are permeated in such a lonely, gloomy atmosphere that his stories contain few of the poverty and suffering that are often found in Japanese speculative fiction, and mostly middle-class spiritual or emotional entanglements.
"In Norway, 20% of children are not born to their fathers... this is the root of the evil in The Snowman. Socialist speculative fiction often blames crimes on institutions and social contradictions, and the significance lies in criticizing reality. The crimes and motives for murder in Yu Nesbo's novels often lie in man himself, who still has desires, evil, and even cruelty in the most seemingly rational system in the world, in the most free environment. Crime does not stem from stubbornness, but from vulnerability. As he analyzes Harry's affair with his old lover Lokay in "The Snowman": "Could it be that the uneasiness of conscience makes us lascivious?" We are unfaithful not because we are ashamed, but because we are ashamed? ”
Yu Nesbo's work also has an eternal protagonist, Officer Harry Holler. Like Anders in Oslo, August 31, Harry doesn't touch drugs, but he is an alcoholic, he is a good solver, but he feels that life has no meaning, he does not lack anything, he does not pursue anything, loneliness and anger have no reason, as if in such a cold environment he should be like this.
Harry, who appeared in The Snowman, lost most of the trust due to his alcoholism, and his favorite girlfriend left him. Immersed in alcohol, Harry is struck by a letter signed "Snowman", and the involvement of the mysterious policewoman, Carthina, allows him to speed up the investigation of the serial murder case.
Stills from The Snowman
Entering Yu Nesbo's novel requires a little patience, taking "The Snowman", there are no less than 50 characters before and after, and the opening scene is a bunch of names, plus the author likes to use the "montage" technique to transition seamlessly, and people who are not used to his writing style need some time to adapt. If you are unfortunate enough to read another novel, "The Mockingbird", the history of Norway and europe since World War II will become another obstacle for readers to solve the crime.
Even if I like You Nesbo, I have to admit that he is not the best at reasoning and the design of the motive for killing. In "The Snowman", the victims of serial murders are women with children, husbands or boyfriends, and following this clue, Harry investigates layer by layer, gradually approaching the truth. In the process of revealing the real murderer, "Snowman" undergoes many reversals, which seem rather imprecise, but in Yu Nesbo's conception, the drama is greater than the tightness of reasoning.
Compared with reasoning and murderous motives, the most attractive thing about "Snowman" is the creation of a suspenseful atmosphere and the genius of Yu Naisbo's ability to control words. He is especially good at depicting killings and murder scenes, and coupled with the ubiquitous ice and snow environment between the lines, every murder makes people feel painful. In this regard, "Snowman" is quite restrained, and by "Cheetah", Yu Neisbo's fierceness is even more unscrupulous.
You Nesbo is not only good at "killing", he is also good at describing fear. Policewoman Katrina screamed, he elaborated: "It was a terrible cry that seeped into the bone marrow, coming from deep in the throat, and after a while, the scream turned into a hysterical whimper, which sounded like laughter." She took a breath, was quiet for a few seconds, and began to make the same scream again, both long and long, like the regular, ritualized song of pain that a woman emits during childbirth. ”
In Yu Neisbo's pen, darkness does not come, it is "flavorful" and "envelops him like a quilt". This kind of graphic expression always spreads the story in front of you, so much so that I have always felt that his novels are suitable for adaptation into movies. It wasn't until I saw the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbinder, The Snowman, that I dismissed that idea. That movie was a complete failure, don't watch it.
In addition to the writing and atmosphere, Yu Nesbo's occasional rock star flair in his novels has always attracted me. What kind of style is that? It is fashionable and urban.
This trait is often reflected in the details of life and emotional states, such as Harry lying in bed with the woman he loves most: "The first time Lokai said she wanted to taste smoking was because she wanted to feel what he felt, to be as poisonous and stimulated as he was, to be as close to him as possible. All he had in mind was that every drug-addicted woman he had ever met had tried to take drugs for the first time for this agreed idiotic reason, and had flatly rejected it. But she persuaded him that eventually it evolved into a ritual, and after making love, they would slowly smoke a cigarette, as if the cigarette were an extension of making love. Sometimes it feels like smoking a pipe that symbolizes peace after a fight. ”
All in all, the joy of reading Yu Nesbo goes far beyond suspense and reasoning. In the middle of summer, flipping "Snowman" in the air-conditioned room and drinking coffee must be a kind of enjoyment. Remember that the coffee must be hot, which is a favorite of Officer Harry in the winter in Oslo.
(This article was originally published in the 2018 "Summer Reading" special issue of Sanlian Life Weekly)
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