When the Cranes Fly South won Swedish Book of the Year and the translation is lovely. It’s told only from the point of view of Bo, a very elderly man. We are in his mind for a few weeks. Bo still lives in the home his parents left to him in a quiet corner of the country. His carers visit to shower him and feed him his meals. We hear their voices through the notes they put in his care book.
A favorite character is Bo’s Elkhound, Sixten. Bo is getting too unsteady to walk Sixten. A theme throughout is that Bo’s only child, Hans plans to give his dog away because Bo puts himself in danger by walking him in fields and woods. Bo’s wife Frederika’s dementia got so bad that she is in a memory care type place. As one would with someone you’ve spent your life with, he talks to her constantly in his mind, all one-way.
We also learn of how Bo grew up in a home with an angry father and a loving but cowed mother. Bo tried to break the cycle with Hans, but he feels often like he did not understand him as Hans got older. Hans joined the conservative party when his parents were more for workers. He works nonstop and makes his work the most important thing in his life. His marriage to Fredrika was loving and a real partnership. She would have cared for him and they would have supported each other in old age, but that was not to be.
Although Bo is not exactly unhappy, he resents his son’s bossiness. He speaks often by phone to his best friend, Ture, but they never get to see each other. Ture is “quirky” and has no other friends, but he and Bo met at work when they were very young and became friends before Bo recognized people don’t seem to take to Ture.
When the Cranes Fly South is rich with life in rural Sweden with food and dogs and a way of life that is one of community and of isolation. It is warm, real and makes pictures in our minds as Bo is helped with the shower or finds his meals jelling by his bedside because he fell asleep. And we also can see his youth and years of marriage in his memories, from the time he left home, to the ways he could do just about anything on the house, to hunting and fishing and seeing his granddaughter in her school play. We learn Bo’s story over a few short weeks. It is so beautifully written and makes me think of my parents in their very later years when we became their parents and they needed carers. If you can handle that it is about being old and no longer able to “do,” even though your mind well remembers evertything, I highly recommend this novel.
They Called me Bookworm 