Ina Merete Schmidt retains certain waggishness and a love of Danish irony in her second novel, Fåresyge ('Sheepish'). A tragic-comic story of meeting one’s fate and reluctantly – perhaps – accepting it.

By Lise Garsdal. Translated by W. Glyn Jones

That Ina Merete Schmidt (b. 1976) is something of a tease was obvious already in her first novel from 2005, Fra dag et ('From Day One'). There – in the story of a neglected Danish upper-class girl who is struggling to grow up in the city of cities, Paris – she allowed her reader to remain in blissful ignorance as to her objective in mercilessly exposing her characters in this way. Was this a case of pure misanthropy, was the family so soaked in narcissism and cool Chardonnay that all hope was gone, or was it possible to believe in reconciliation between the generations? In Ina Merete Schmidt’s second novel, Fåresyge ('Sheepish'), we find ourselves in a similar balancing act between hope and hopelessness, between tenderness and cruelty. No less serious and certainly no less entertaining. That Ina Merete Schmidt continues to draw on the Danish tradition of irony and absurdism, which not least established itself in the 1990s’ boom in young stage drama, is obvious.

In 'Sheepish', the principal female character, Miriam, is a little older. But she is no more sure of her relationship to the person closest to her, who in this case is her husband Lars. As another example of the author’s love of teasing, this young Danish couple is stationed in Norway, the neighbouring country on which, in frequent manifestations of a sense of inferiority and delusions of grandeur, Danes love to pour scorn because of the grandiose landscape and the national self-assuredness that they themselves seem to lack. And so the author installs Lars and Miriam in an awe-inspiring mountain idyll with tantalising quantities of fresh air and a minute local population that very obviously has enough in itself. Here, we encounter small, elfin Norwegian wives, women who gather berries and stick their noses into everything, silent men who dig holes in the back garden, sky-high food prices, rationed red wine and rather little for a Dane to do unless she laces up her hiking boots and surrenders herself to the mountains. Which Miriam indeed finally does.

Lars is a doctor of the irritatingly dogged school, while Miriam is an artist of a somewhat vague stamp. He works unendingly, while she has come to a halt. An impressive misalliance, but the past has laid claim to their common future: They have lost a little daughter, and these two are the only ones who can live through the sorrow in all its phases and nuances. For, beneath its layers of amusing and biting satire layers, 'Sheepish' is in reality a very simple and easily comprehended story about the task of mourning. And when it comes to capturing the psychological mechanisms and reactions in the inconceivable tragedy, Ina Merete Schmidt is again an outstanding observer, who does not resort to presenting one parent’s reaction more loyally than that of the other, while at the same time neither does she use the sorrow to excuse her two characters. Weak qualities such as pettiness and intolerance develop into unfaithfulness and distrust, while only brief moments of tenderness and understanding puncture the bubble of isolation in which Miriam is being suffocated. And readers will find themselves hoping for the best for the two.

But are predictability and well-intentioned realism not lurking just around the corner? No. Fortunately, Ina Merete Schmidt refuses to allow either her characters or her readers get off so lightly. As already said, the author endows Miriam, the narrator, with the gift of irony, which puts her at a distance from events, while the action is itself a challenge to the realist method; indeed the book develops into a psychological thriller of absurd dimensions. The gallery of characters is expanded en route with for instance a set of parents-in-law who would be at home in the most pernicious cartoon and a handicapped young man in a wheelchair who is used as a stage requisite in the couple’s internal confrontation. And also of importance: a galloping elk that has gone astray. The implication of 'Sheepish' seems to be that occasionally, something as big and inescapable as an elk is necessary before we apply the emergency brake and wake up. Whether this waking up to a shared married life can be called happy is something to which Ina Merete Schmidt – quite naturally – refuses to provide an unambiguous answer.

EXTRACT

He had just been called again. Traffic accident in a tunnel in the valley. He got out of bed and dressed quickly. The ambulance would pick him up in two minutes at the doctor’s office in town. There was no reason to drive up to the site of the accident in his own car.  It would be quicker in the ambulance.

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