After the Fire by Henning Mankell, Marlaine Delargy

Henning Mankell's last novel, about an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside down when his house catches fire. Fredrik Welin is a former surgeon who retired in disgrace decades earlier to a tiny island on which he is the only resident. He has a daughter he rarely sees and his mailman Jansson is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content to live out his days in quiet solitude. One autumn evening, he is startled awake by a blinding light-only to discover that his house is on fire. With the help of Jansson, he escapes the flames just in time wearing two left boots. Dawn reveals that everything he owns is now a smoldering pile of ash and his house is destroyed-forcing him to move into an abandoned trailer on his island. A local journalist, Lisa Modin, who wants to write a story about the fire, comes into his life. In doing so, she awakens in him something that he thought was long dead. Soon after, his daughter comes to the island with surprising news of her own. Meanwhile, the police suspect Fredrik of arson because he had a sizable insurance claim on his house. When Fredrik is away from the archipelago, another house goes up in flames and the community realizes they have an arsonist in their midst. After the Fire is an intimate portrait of an elderly recluse who is forced to open himself up to a world he'd left behind. Editorial Reviews *08/21/2017 On a rocky, remote private island in a Swedish archipelago, 70-year-old Fredrik Welin wakes to a searing light. He stumbles outside, recovering only a raincoat and two left boots on the way, and watches helplessly as his house burns to its foundations. This final novel from Mankell (the Kurt Wallander series), posthumously published in a stunning English translation, questions what happens to a person who has lost everything--and who considers himself too old to rebuild. Fredrik hardly has time to grieve the memories that burned along with the house's contents; when investigators arrive to inspect the smoking ruins, they discover clear signs of arson. Could it be insurance fraud? Or does the responsibility lie with one of Fredrik's neighbors, whom he's known for years and who showed up in their boats to battle the flames? And how will Fredrik's daughter--pregnant and harboring secrets of her own--react to the loss of her inheritance? Mankell's understated yet thrilling use of language brings both the rugged scenery and Fredrik's deep-rooted loneliness to life. It's a skillfully told, exquisitely structured story filled with sharp insights into human nature and unflinching examinations of the complex relationships to which people bind themselves in order to feel a little bit less alone. (Oct.) - Publishers Weekly 2017-08-06 Eight years after his barren but settled life was harrowed by a series of once-in-a-lifetime crises (Italian Shoes, 2009), ignominiously retired surgeon Fredrik Welin is beset by an even more traumatic event in this final novel by the creator of beloved police detective Kurt Wallander.Awakening one night to find his house on fire, Welin has just enough time to don two boots before fleeing the inferno. The home built by his grandparents is a dead loss, along with everything inside it; even the pair of boots he grabbed wasn't really a pair. Thinking of Louise, the daughter whose existence he never suspected until she was an adult, he reflects: Did I want to rebuild the house or should I let Louise inherit the site of a fire? That pivotal question is complicated by several other developments. Louise is a thief and perhaps a prostitute; she won't tell Welin who fathered her baby; she's arrested on a trip to Paris; and in the meantime, the local police have shown considerable interest in Welin as the leading suspect in what looks more and more like a case of arson. Even the new boots he orders turn out to be the wrong size. Only his growing friendship with journalist Lisa Modin seems to hold out any hope of renewal for Welin's frozen life. Yet here too the path is strewn with difficulties: Lisa is a generation younger than Welin, she has baggage of her own, and it's not at all obvious that she returns his romantic interest. No wonder Welin concludes, There was no god in my caravan. Yet amid all his ruminations and flashbacks and flirtations with despair, Mankell shows his unlikely hero's indomitable will to survive and, if possible, to make the next chapter of his life an improvement on what's gone before. A bracing look at a twilight year in the life of an old man who, when confronted daily by perfectly good reasons for giving up altogether, doesn't so much rise above as plow stoically through them. - Kirkus Reviews Narrator Sean Barrett's sonorous and elegant delivery is somehow perfect for the somber tones of the last novel by the nordic noir writer Henning Mankell. Barrett breathes life into the collection of Baltic archipelago eccentrics Mankell has assembled for this study of loneliness, old age, and humans with no talent for connection. It is not a thriller, though it has the feel of one, beginning with an arsonist burning Fredrik Welin's house down, and very nearly killing him. Frederik is a retired doctor living alone on a Baltic island; rather improbably, absent other evidence, police suspect Frederik himself. Mankell completists will welcome this follow-on to his novel ITALIAN SHOES; fans of his murder mysteries may wish for either more plot or less anomie. B.G. AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine - FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile Narrator Sean Barrett's sonorous and elegant delivery is somehow perfect for the somber tones of the last novel by the nordic noir writer Henning Mankell. Barrett breathes life into the collection of Baltic archipelago eccentrics Mankell has assembled for this study of loneliness, old age, and humans with no talent for connection. It is not a thriller, though it has the feel of one, beginning with an arsonist burning Fredrik Welin's house down, and very nearly killing him. Frederik is a retired doctor living alone on a Baltic island; rather improbably, absent other evidence, police suspect Frederik himself. Mankell completists will welcome this follow-on to his novel ITALIAN SHOES; fans of his murder mysteries may wish for either more plot or less anomie. B.G. AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine - FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile