We don’t punish people because they are evil, but because they make bad choices, choices that are bad for the herd. Morality isn’t heaven-sent or eternal, just a set of rules that benefit the herd.Sonny Loftus is a 30-year-old, drugged up convict that fellow prisoners regard as a type of messiah figure. Having been incarcerated for all of his adult life, Sonny is content to confess to crimes in exchange for heroin -- a system that satisfies the corrupt officials hidden away in every level of the justice and penal systems. When a prisoner comes to Sonny to make a confession -- a story that shines a fresh light on Sonny's father's suicide -- the son plans a prison break and goes on an avenging rampage.
Part The Count of Monte Cristo, part Pulp Fiction, The Son follows Sonny's adventures and those of the one confirmed uncorrupt cop who's out to find him. There's plenty of blood and gore and we know that we're in Norway because every time a character has some deep thinking to do, he parks high above a fjord to contemplate the view. The point is made repeatedly that good people are driven to do bad things in these desperate economic times, and even Sonny -- with his calming presence and beatific smile -- is to be cheered on as he selects who will live and who will be executed.
Reality is a little thin on the ground here, and with some clunky dialogue, the translation might be to blame for some of my eye-rolling. I'm guessing the following is faithful to the author's intent though: Martha, the hostel manager with compassion fatigue who believes that Sonny is a down and out heroin addict, teaches him to drive and during his first highway attempt --
A tractor trailer came towards them. She held her breath. She knew that on the narrow road, she would -- even though she knew there was room for both of them -- automatically brake and pull to the side. But (Sonny) wasn't daunted by it. And the strange thing was that she trusted him to make the right call. The male brain's innate understanding of three dimensions.Puh-lease! Experience tells you to pull over but you trust the judgement of a junkie who has been driving for half and hour? I can't even say that this was a fun romp because it just wasn't that well written, and at 400 pages, too long. By the end, there are so many twists and turns that the revelations felt like tricks instead of solved mysteries **spoiler** and I don't care that Simon was the second mole or that the brother that The Twin drowned was his own reflection, but why did Kari's partner Sam need to turn out to be another woman if not to play gotcha with the reader? **end spoiler** I was interested in the Norwegian point-of-view (the distress that people feel as their society starts to separate into disparate economic classes or that someone's mountain cabin would have a ski jump -- no wonder Norwegians dominate the Winter Olympics), but in the end, that wasn't enough to redeem this book for me. This would be a 2.5 star read, rounded up.
