| Into this meager, bleak landscape, one morning Fredrik sees a figure out on the ice. It is a woman with a walker. Jansson must have dropped her off. The woman is a lover from his youth, Harriet. He abandoned her when he came to America to do postgraduate work years ago. She falls over on the ice with her arms outstretched. He puts her in a wheelbarrow and struggles to get her to the house. Harriet is dying from cancer. Years ago Fredrik promised to take her to a forest pool where his father took him as a child. She is now holding him to that promise. Surprisingly, he acquiesces.
He will drive Harriet to a small town to pick up Harriet's daughter. They will go on to the forest pool. At the end of this section, they reach Louise's caravan outside town:
The caravan door opened. A woman emerged. She was wearing a pink dressing gown and high-heeled shoes...This is my daughter, said Harriet. I stayed where I was. This is your father, said Harriet to her daughter.
This is the end of Ice. I liken Ice to be a period of sleep, evil spells, imprisonment such as exists in the works of the Grimm Brothers - Sleeping Beauty, Snow White -- stasis. There will be no more of imprisonment for Fredrik now - he can surface from the ice. He is free to seek redemption.
THE FOREST
The three travelers take on the trip through the forest. Harriet's illness intensifies; she is in great pain but they continue on. Fredrik says of the trip:
My whole life changed before my eyes. I'd managed to get this far. There might be a few crossroads yet to come. But not too many. My journey was nearly over. (In fact it is not.)
In fairy tales, a forest is always a dangerous place, full of treachery and dragons. Italian Shoes is a classic journey of a hero who must face obstacles before he wins the prize. These goals include his daughter's love, and a reproachment with Harriet. There is another goal. He must face his frozen life and why he lives it. The reader now learns that years before Fredrik amputated the wrong, non-cancerous arm of a young woman, Agnes. He left his home, his work and took up residence on the lonely, cold island. Fredrik turned his back and abandoned himself.
Let's step back for a moment -- Fredrik is not a likeable character. He is stiff necked, arrogant, cold. He abandoned a woman who loved him and whom he loved. Still, there is something in the character of a man who jumps into ice every morning to undertake a realized self-punishment that is remarkable. Note, dear reader, that he reimprisons himself every morning by taking that icy odyssey. It takes a great turn of fate to waken him. Now it has come in the guise of family.
When he was a child, his waiter father told him a good pair of shoes would make him better able to do his work properly. (An author chooses his title carefully. Heed it.) By the way, the daughter who is quirky and difficult herself, occasionally wears a pair of red high heels throughout the trip. And she will take him to an Italian shoemaker where she lives who spends several hours properly fitting him for said shoes.
Now Fredrik is free to visit Agnes who is running a home for foster girls. Agnes is living a life of purpose. She has one arm, which has turned out to be noncancerous after all. She tells him:
I used to be a swimmer....I could have become a champion. I can say, without bitterness that my strong point was not my legs, but the strength I had in my arms.
Italian Shoes is a novel of movement and stasis. Life is movement and stillness but it demands both to be properly lived. The novel hints that Agnes and Fredrik will become friends, maybe lovers. After all, they are a necessary line to each other's life.
The last few sentences of The Forest:
Standing alone out there on the pier, I started to cry. Every single door inside me was swinging back and forth in the wind, which seemed to be getting stronger every time.
THE SEA
Come on - you knew this was coming. Fredrik shoots his ailing dog. The cat disappears. And one of the foster girls visits the island and commits suicide. His old life is falling away. (I apologize to my readers to give just one sad line to the life of this girl - but this review cannot take on all that goes on in the novel. Her story alone would make a fine novella.) I offer here my tears to this girl and all like her. (This is truly a Scandanavian novel!)
The beginning of April - Louise and Harriet (now close to death) visit the island. There is a happy celebration with Jansson and the nearby town's doctor, wife and grandaughter. In the midst of the joy of gathering, Louise talks about her boxing which she has undertaken because "people must fight for what is right in this life." (Yes, it is an exhausting novel, but it is a good exhaustion. I slept soundly after I finished it.) Even Harriet now near the end enjoys the gathering. The travel is ending as these people move onto the sea -- and finally home - a hint of the Odyssey. And Harriet dies.
WINTER SOLSTICE
Fredrik takes on a spaniel he rescued while on his forest journey, and Agnes visits the island. She will bring her girls here, as she has lost the lease on her home. His daughter also visits. When his daughter leaves:
Now it was only the dog and me. My friend Carra (He never named the prior dog or called him a friend!). It's going to be just as quiet here as it always is for the time being. Then we shall build a new house. And girls will play music far too loudly, they'll be shouting and sometimes they will hate the island. But they're coming here....A bunch of wild horses is on its way here.
The denoument and a particularly beautiful passage. Simple, elegant, spare - like a winter's day. And what moves freely as wild horses! Fredrik is in the midst of his Bergmanian redemption.
The shoes arrive from the old shoemaker -- a pair of black shoes with a hint of violet.
******
This is a splendid book. I usually prefer a woman as protagonist and/or writer. But here, Mankell has given us a man, flawed but capable of great courage. I am always willing to smooth a woman's flaws in novels - here I can forgive a man's. Fredrik is a man's man. (Impolitic but it's how I feel.) Plus I love the structure as it relates to the old tales. Read it. It cleanses.
Well, dear reader, it is now almost 6 am. I started writing this at about 4 am and had to reread some passages because I hadn't read it for a few weeks. My gs seem to be stuck on this new keyboard - but I am off to my tempurpedic (in the spirit of Sweden) and will edit when I awaken from my slumber. I love this book and have become quite fond of Fredrik.
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