Random Things Tours: The Guests by Agnes Ravatn translated by Rosie Hedger

 ´Bit of fun, isn´t it, being someone else?´

Not all psychological novels should be packed with action. Some may just slowly explore a topic creating slowly the ambiance, only to sudden switch to a new direction that will also follow its own pathway to grow.

The Guests by multi-awarded Norwegian author Agnes Ravatn, translated into English by Rosie Hedger and published this month by Orenda Books, one of my favorite English-language publishing houses is a very fine work. 

An average couple, Kai and Karin, do accept a sudden offer from a school friend, Iris Vielden, now a successful actress and socialite, to spend one week in an elegant cabin of ´secluded majesty´ in the fjords. Iris, a manipulative nature that seemed to have left traumatic traces into Karin´s life, suddenly re-entered her existence. 

Karin, in her own words ´insecure and neurotic´, anxiously get losts into other people lives. She thinks about what should could have been. Well read, she is obsessively searching other people, including Iris. She wants to be someone else, forgetting and neglecting her own gifts. The book offers few good thoughts about what our lives are made of when influenced by our overinflated projections of rich and famous.  

While slowly getting used with her short episode of luxury at the cabin, she got to know her temporary neighbours, a couple of mid-age writers and alongside with Kai, she is playing an impersonating game. There is a game of comfort and comforting, that will not diminish her insecurities, just magnify her issues and obsessions. 

The story follows the psychological thread of lies, how they appear, their role and their nonchalant acceptance. It´s an anti-social game Karin is passionately playing. There are innocent lies, indeed, no one is harmed. It may make the life more bearable, but there is no jest into a life of lies. 

And we, as readers, are sometimes took over by the mirage of the story. We are made believe many possible ways and directions the story can lead to, but although we are left with a lesser promise, the intellectual exercise is much more worth than any spectacular twist that I was maybe expecting at the beginning of the story. 

The Guests is well written and prodigiously executed, like a fjord painting featuring small traces of life in their midst, silhouettes of human beings trying to play dare or truth with their own life, so insignificant at the huge and eternal scale of nature.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own