Doppler

Why should I, a grown man, have a bad conscience about killing a moose? It's nature's way. The calf will have to learn, and it should be happy that it's me, Doppler, who is teaching it and not some more unscrupulous individual who might have made cold meat of the calf as well while he was at it.

While out for a bike ride one day, Doppler – a self-involved Oslo-based yuppie who laments that the news coverage of the Coalition's invasion of Iraq was distracting him from selecting the perfect tiles for his bathroom reno – falls and hits his head. As he is lying prone in the still forest, Doppler experiences unfamiliar peace, and whether this is a soul-deep epiphany or the result of a concussion, he decides to abandon his wife and family and go to live in a tent in the forest. The blurb for Doppler assures me that I'll find the ensuing story both poignant and hilarious – you will read it with tear-stained cheeks and sore sides – but I can't say that was quite my experience: charming and quirky, this was a good, if not quite great read. This is the first book in a trilogy written by Erlend Loe, and although the next two volumes don't appear to be available in English translation, I'm not beating my breast and gnashing my teeth over the fact.

There is nothing like man and animal working in close collaboration against the forces of evil.

After killing a mama moose with only a knife, Doppler is forced to adopt her calf; a gangly little fellow who won't stop following the man around. Doppler decides to name him “Bongo” after his recently deceased father (despite “Bongo” not having been his father's name), and the little moose serves as sounding board for Doppler's anti-societal rants, and well as his comic foil, and substitute family (everyone has Daddy issues in this book and Doppler works through his with a moose calf and a totem pole). We learn that Doppler is tired of being nice all the time, he realises that he doesn't actually like people, and when he successfully barters extra moose meat for essentials, he discovers that Capitalism is a trap. Unfortunately, the few men that Doppler does encounter during this period are attracted to his hermitical philosophy, and the newly-minted misanthrope finds his corner of the forest filling up with fellow escapees. 

There are other things besides Smart Club and childrens birthdays and dinner with so-called friends and our repulsively Norwegian notion of social cosiness, which allows us to be both the most affable and the most self-centered nation in the world.

It's nicely ironic that I've read a book about someone rejecting this Scandinavian love of cosiness at the same time that the rest of the world is becoming aware of it – the Danes have Hygge, the Swedes embrace Lagom, and apparently the Norse call the same idea Koselig – so in a way, Doppler is more on trend today than it was when it was released in 2010. Still, I can't imagine preferring to spend a Northern winter sleeping in a tent in the snow – even with a warm moose as a pillow – as a rejection of society unless this really is meant to be a result of lingering brain damage. Taken less literally, this is an interesting (if fairly gentle) insider critique of Norwegian society, and it's worth reading for that. And also for the solid feeling of the little book in your hands with the adorable moosehead graphic on the cover; there's definitely a cosiness to that.