Professor Andersens nacht

Professor Pål Andersen had been living alone for the last few years and always doing what is expected from him. Including preparing and eating the usual foods at the time it is expected to eat them, a Christmas tree and even presents under it - even if he does not have anyone to share all that

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with.

We meet him at Christmas - after preparing and eating his meal, he looks through the window and sees something that looks like murder. Being the responsible man he is, he picks up the phone to call the police but then remembers the few drinks he had had and decides to leave that for the morning. The morning comes and he finds another excuse not to call - now worried that he will not be believed. And so it starts.

For the next few months, that decision eats at him - he keeps looking at the window and trying to decide what to do, reading the papers and waiting to hear something about the murder. At one point, he even meets the man he believes to be a killer.

For a story centered around a murder, there is very little about the murder itself in it. It happens (or may have happened) and it sends the Professor on his anguished journey through his own memories and thoughts but seems like that was its only purpose. The novel is really about what happens when someone who is always proper and right does something unexpected - and then have to live with the choice.

The end comes almost unexpectedly. In some ways Professor Andersen makes a full circle - he finds an equilibrium of a type. On the other, that murder that kicked off everything feels incomplete. But then this is part of the point I suspect - you learn to live with things, even when you are uncomfortable with them.

I am still not sure if I liked this novel or not - it still feels incomplete to me. But I am not sorry to have read it.

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