By Susanne Bjertrup. Translated by W. Glyn Jones

A woman, 42 years of age, takes the bus to get away from something she is upset about. She looks for a good place to weep and ends on a bench out on the coast. It is January, and a hurricane is on the way, so she can’t get any further for the time being. The next bus has been cancelled.

The woman is rescued from the bus shelter by a very hospitable younger couple, John and Putte. The stranger can easily sleep in their sitting room while the storm is raging. The couple are not working for the time being because they are suffering from whiplash. But if anything upsets them, they keep their sorrows at a distance by means of cigarettes, hot coffee or some entertaining game.

The starting point for Helle Helle’s fourth novel, Ned til hundene ('Over to the Dogs') is an exceptional situation. The three figures are brought together as the result of a chance event, the hurricane. In normal circumstances they would scarcely have met each other, but they now develop a sense of commonalty that transforms the stranger. She is given a name, Bente, and feels herself curiously comfortable with her new anonymous identity. The question of when the next bus will arrive becomes a matter of less importance.

When yet another new situation arises, leaving “Bente” alone in the house for a couple of days, she starts acting in ways she would never do in her normal life. She feeds Putte’s two dogs and takes them for walks. She cycles in melting snow to a second-hand shop that has an East German christmas scenery for sale. She moves a load of briquettes under cover. In other words, she is practical. And helpful.

From a series of inserted flashbacks revealing why she has chosen to disappear from her normal life, the reader knows that she is not exactly the most helpful character in her everyday life. She is the person who can sit on the sofa throughout the day and let herself be waited on by her doctor boyfriend – and the school psychologist, who has been brought in to bring her out of her depression. She is the person who is relieved at having forgotten her diary when an old friend wants to arrange to meet her. She is the author who wants to be a nonentity with the ability to see and hear.

But in John and Putte’s boiler suit she is the woman who takes action. However, this would be strikingly atypical of Helle Helle if 'Over to the Dogs' were a straightforward story in which something as simple as a change of environment effects a cure and solves all the problems. As in her earlier novels, 'Rødby-Puttgarden' (which was awarded the Critics’ Prize in 2005), 'The Idea of an Uncomplicated Live with a Man' and 'House and Home', sorrow and unexpressed conflicts lie hidden beneath all the surfaces. John and Putte, too, are vulnerable people with a past. And it is questionable whether “Bente” is good company for them or whether she is not rather a bird of ill omen, as the secondary character, Elly, the osteoporosis sufferer, snarls in a moment of anger. There could well be symbolical justification in the novel for interpreting “Bente” as a bird of ill omen. There are plenty of other birds in the story. On the other hand, Helle Helle never allows a symbol to fit in every respect. It is rather a teaser that tempts the reader to embark on a specific interpretative route which can easily turn out to be a dead end. And there you are, and a moment ago you thought …

This special manner of challenging the reader’s expectations – by hinting at meanings that perhaps are not there after all – is an essential part of Helle Helle’s art. She gives and takes with the same hand. An unexpected bump by the front door creates a sense of foreboding. But it is only a bag of shopping being put down there.

Another special feature of Helle Helle as a novelist is her ability to come close to people who do not usually find a voice in literature, the quiet figures of a provincial backwater. She hits them off perfectly in both their words and their actions. She knows their taste for roast pork, their furniture, their lotto coupons, their oil barrels disguised as pepper mills. But she refrains from judging them. On the contrary, she portrays them as loving, caring people who will avoid conflict if possible. There is neither violence nor murder in 'Over to the Dogs'; at most there are accidents, which can well be dramatic. John and Putte’s shared trauma is serious, but very ordinary. It is no one’s fault. Things simply happen, and people influence each other also in areas where they have no intention of doing so.

The open question asked by the novel is concerned with identity. Can you tear yourself away from your past and start afresh? Or will you always be caught up by your former self? Helle Helle gives no answer to this, but is content to sketch in the problem in a wonderful underplayed prose. After that, we, the readers, have to imagine the rest.

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