Bestselling Norwegian author Frode Grytten makes his American debut with THE FERRYMAN AND HIS WIFE. Translated by Alison McCullough, this transcendent, profound book is already an award winner in Grytten’s home country.

“At a quarter past five in the morning Nils Vik opened his eyes, and the last day of his life began.” Nils has lived his entire life in his little house off a fjord in Norway. Born and raised there along with his brother, Nils eventually married Marta, a gorgeous, cunning woman who gave him two daughters, Eli and Guro. Through the deaths of his parents, his estrangement from his brother, his marriage, and the births of his children, the one constant has been the gurgling, rumbling fjord.

A ferryman by birth and by nature, Nils has always spoken the language of the fjord as if it was his own dialect. His journeys forward and backward across it have gifted him with numerous enlightening encounters that he --- a man destined to live a small life in a small home --- never would have known otherwise. It is these fleeting interactions that have become especially monumental to him, as he is now taking his final journey across the fjord, home to his death and to Marta, who predeceased him years earlier.

"Grytten’s masterwork is, like its narrator, quiet and introspective, but it is also resounding in its affirmations of love and life. A poignant, timeless novel, this is the perfect end-of-year read for anyone who is wondering 'What’s it all about, really?'"

As Nils prepares for his last day on earth, readers are introduced to a quiet, introspective man married to his routines. Despite it being the day of his death, he prepares his morning coffee, bathes, shaves, and leaves a note for his daughters letting them know that the family home is now theirs and to please never fight over it. He then boards his ferry to take his final journey, watching slowly as the sun rises and his neighbors wake up to start their normal, very alive days. Before long, Nils is joined by Luna, a beloved dog who has been with him for more than 20 years, despite dying over a decade ago. As a travel companion, Luna is there to prompt Nils to look deeper, to remember, to face for the last time every single decision and journey that has brought him to this point --- the good and the bad.

Like the mythical ferryman taking the dead down the River Styx, Nils is visited by several people who have passed on. They are former customers of his, and each has shared a prescient moment with him. As Nils and Luna invite them onto the ferry, Nils revisits his logbook --- where he recorded not just weather patterns, but births, deaths and chance encounters --- to remember who he was when he met each ghost and what each living person once meant to him. Grytten paints not just a picture of a life lived, but of a nation unfolding, changing with the generations and sometimes not at all. But what matters most to Nils, of course, is getting “home” to Marta.

Nils and Marta’s marriage was not without its issues, and it’s in exploring those --- from the ferry passenger who fell in love with his wife to her brief foray into rebellion and then her first stroke --- that THE FERRYMAN AND HIS WIFE really shines. The Nils the reader has met knows only one thing: that he loves Marta and must get to her. The obstacles and hiccups their marriage faced left a lasting impact on both of them. But in Grytten’s tender, unassuming prose, the inevitability of their reunion after every fight becomes a shining, shimmering throughline of the narrative. It is in exploring these fraught moments that Nils feels certain, once and for all, that his life has been worth something. Because life, as he teaches us, is lived not in the big moments, but in the small ones: being awakened by giggling daughters, sharing a cigarette with a grieving midwife, reaching for your wife across a warm bed. 

Spanning the book’s pages are gorgeous, lyrical descriptions of the Norwegian countryside and the perils that have long awaited seamen in its fjords. Surprisingly, Nils notes, he never learned to swim as a boy: “Generations of seafarers had never learned to swim” because a boat going down in the fjords is doomed, and “swimming only [prolongs] the suffering.” It’s a quiet, throwaway detail that exposes much more than its speaker intends about his life and his perspective, as well as the dangers of the work to which he has committed himself for so many decades.

At the same time, Nils unpacks the superstitions of seamen, noting that they get tattoos of pigs, roosters and swallows, since “these are the animals and birds that know the way home.” This duality speaks not only to his mindset, but to the fjord itself: a gorgeous, expansive pathway to opportunity for its travelers that also puts its greatest champions at unimaginable risk day after day. 

It is difficult to describe THE FERRYMAN AND HIS WIFE in the usual terms one finds in these kinds of reviews. Grytten’s masterwork is, like its narrator, quiet and introspective, but it is also resounding in its affirmations of love and life. A poignant, timeless novel, this is the perfect end-of-year read for anyone who is wondering “What’s it all about, really?” Grytten’s answer may be simple, but it’s true: “It’s impossible to control a narrative once it’s been set in motion. All you can do is follow its telling until the very last second.”