On my way out I read the sign with the commandant’s regulations. It didn’t say anything about not swimming in the moat. Once in a while somebody must jump in, I thought. Wild swims are becoming increasingly popular across Europe. I’ve heard of a British woman, for instance, who managed to swim her way up through a large lake system somewhere in the middle of England. Every midsummer night she was out swimming, and I imagine her fighting her way up salmon ladders and into still waters. ~ Wild Swims
I hadn’t heard of the current Instagrammable phenomenon of “Wild Swimming” (apparently, simply the act of swimming in any natural body of water) before I read this book, but having googled the title and reading the extra information that incidentally came up, I can see that this makes for a brilliant (English) title for this collection of short stories. The main pushback against the trend of Wild Swimming is that it’s mostly indulged in by wealthy, white urbanites — people so removed from the natural world that they fetishise and valorise acts that their poorer, rural neighbours enjoy as routine and accessible — and throughout the fourteen (very) short stories in Wild Swims, we meet a variety of characters (who might well all be privileged, white urbanites) who all seem to be suffering from modern forms of disconnection: from themselves, from their partners, from decency. Author Dorthe Nors frequently shocks her characters with memories bubbling up coldly, as from an underground spring, to add discomfort to their current placidity; the past and present shift seamlessly over the course of brief paragraphs and sentences, and the writing is not so much stream-of-consciousness as swirl-of-ponderence. Characters are fully fleshed with precisely captured moments, the narratives are unpredictable but credible, and the situations made me wince and snort and sigh as people attempted to, as in the title story, fight their way up salmon ladders in search of still waters. (I will note that in the original Danish, this collection was titled “Kort over Canada” — which I translated as “A Map of Canada” — and as the character from Pershing Square has a fantasy of pretending to be Canadian based on stereotypes about the country as dull and decent, I’d say, as a Canadian myself, that’s a type of disconnect from reality, too.) I don’t believe I’ve read a Danish author before, but as these stories are set all over the world, I don’t know if there’s anything pointedly Danish about them (note: the story Hygge made me quite uncomfortable, so that’s a disconnect from the stereotype that felt nicely ironic), and I would love to read more from Nors. This collection provided an enriching, if too brief, reading experience.
From here, I’ll just give a flavour of the writing with unfairly out-of-context quotes. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
First she won all the battles, then he positioned himself squarely on her side. In that way, he stopped losing, and she tired of scrutinizing him. ~ In a Deer Stand
She stood there and the light went right through her, that’s the way I remember it. How the sun caused her physical form to cease. On the broad white expanse she cast a sharp shadow and I stood opposite her, not alone. ~ Sun Dogs
It was as we were sitting on the couch, me with her free hand on my trouser knee and her with her eye on the Baileys, that she said, “We’re good friends , aren’t we? I know I’m stupid,” she said, “and it can’t be easy for you with all your brains to go around with someone like me,” she said. “So can’t we just be cozy ?” ~ Hygge
She’s thinking about him and what he said — that it wasn’t love. It couldn’t be, he’d said, and here she’d gone and felt precisely as if it were. ~ By Sydvest Station
When I turned off the light, it began to come over me. I lay on my back, arms a bit out to the sides, legs heavy, relaxed. My body felt good, I sank down into the soft mattress, and a short while later the bed was no longer a bed but bare earth. Thin vegetation grew up around and through me. That’s what it felt like. It was a chilly day, far from Boston, there was water nearby, and then the bird came. It perched on one of my ribs. Then it started to peck the flesh from my breastbone. It was a quiet act of devotion, and the sky above me was no longer local but some vast firmament, and I disappeared into it. ~ Between Offices
It’s dawned on her that while it lasted, she was really two people at the same time. One who was as if possessed by love, and one who walked alongside, silent and observing, and sometimes the two would have arguments that the observer always lost, because love bears all things, endures all things, but if I have not love, the lover screamed, I am clanging brass, a sounding cymbal, and the observer made a mental note that horror vacui might be what gets the country’s church bells to ring. ~ The Fairground
There was some lighthearted confusion a little while later when Anja kissed me back by the outdoor shower. It wasn’t a good kiss. The yellow flowers on the sleeves of her dress seemed to be elsewhere beneath my hands. ~ Compaction Birds
The entire drive home she thought about an episode of Dr. Phil she’d once seen. It featured a woman not unlike herself. She sat on stage and lamented the fact that men rejected her because she was intelligent. Dr. Phil affirmed this without hesitation. Then the woman said it was wrong and unfair . Then Dr. Phil asked, “But do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” Whereupon the audience applauded wildly. ~ Pershing Square
Nobody else was home, but she wanted the lights off, so it was lucky it was summer. He was able to push her far enough to the left on the pillow that the light from the window struck her. There she lay like a pale blotch in the midsummer night, and he removed her glasses. The stripped, absent face excited him, and while her gaze fluttered about trying to locate him, she told him she’d never done this before. Then he stroked her hair, until a faint expression of gratitude appeared on the face below. A small picture of the effect of his caress, and it made his erection so hard, he was forced to raise himself on one elbow. ~ Honeysuckle
The doctor said there was nothing they could do, that Einar should go home and make the most of his remaining time. Those were his words, according to the sister’s summary, and in the evening Alice called around the circle and said, “Now we have to hope he manages to get a hospice place.” Afterward, when she’d hung up the phone, she sat for a while staring out into the midsummer darkness, and without realizing it she hummed, “I get so happy when the sun is shining.” ~ On Narrow Paved Paths
It’d be nice if she were standing next to him now. There was a time when they always visited churches together. Ten years ago, she would have been standing at his side. In her bag she’d have juice cartons, disinfected hankies, chapstick. There was a time when she never left home without fruit in her purse. He’s given her children, and they’ve never wanted for anything. The last thing he saw outside was her biting into an almond croissant, washing it down with scalding coffee, and reaching for her phone. Who can drink coffee in this heat? he wonders, closing his eyes for a moment. ~ Inside St. Paul’s
It was as if a heavy lid had slammed shut within me. That’s how I recall it, a great lid, and beneath it a frozen darkness that was all my own. While Mark held forth on my naïveté for the others, I fell back into the dark and thought of things that were impervious — cement floors, plexiglass, ice packs — and that the safest way to avoid people like Mark was to seal yourself off, and then, when you were sealed off, it was about your face and getting it back in position, getting it to close over the darkness and everything you have stored inside. ~ The Freezer Chest
He can see her, a girl scout in the summer darkness with fever-white hair. He’s turned everything off in the living room, and she probably can’t see him. Her face takes on an odd luminosity from her phone. He can see her chewing her lip in concentration. Now she raises her eyes. It’s the girl from the driveway. She peers at the window, eyes wide. Quickly he shoves his face against the pane, pressing, opening his mouth. His teeth touch glass and her throat muscles tense, then she bolts like an animal down the bank, across the road, in her nightshirt. ~ Manitoba
