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 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. ( )

Very well done, if not as interesting as the other Solstad recently published by New Directions. ( )

Tragedia, morale e sacro attorno ad un delitto di cui il professore è inattivo testimone nella sera della vigilia di Natale. Un viaggio al centro del senso di vuoto della nostra epoca. ( )

*
What if ? after eating a great meal alone, maybe you’ve had a couple of glasses of your favourite spirit, & now thoroughly relaxed you look out of the window, casting a comfortable possessive eye over this, your neighbourhood, your domain that you know every brick of. What if whilst you are doing this, you see a murder committed ?

How would you react?
Would you report it?
Are you sure?

Christmas Eve and Professor Anderson is a contented successful man spending this eve by himself in his apartment, quite happy with his lot as he prepares his traditional meal in his traditional manner. Pal Anderson is a 55 year old Professor of Literature, living a life of apparent ease, untroubled by his existence as he relaxes with a meal and a couple of glasses of good cognac. He glances over at the windows of his neighbours & observes what looks like a beautiful young woman, he glances again and this time he sees a man murdering her.

Faced with this act he recoils back with shock and horror. He heads to the phone and picks it up, before finding himself unable to make the call, unable to report to what he himself perceives is an awful crime. At first it’s as though he is merely postponing his decision, reasoning the why’s and wherefores, but his inaction soon leads to prevarication, in that he is actively evading making the call. The next day he goes to a dinner party at the house of his friend, he even sets off early with the aim of discussing his dilemma with his best friend, but finds himself unable to. We then follow the Professor over a period of a couple of months as his inability to act becomes a point that brings his whole life under question, until he is questioning every aspect of his world. Even bumping into the murderer in a sushi bar leads to no more than another round of self analysis.

Although this book is centred around a murder, like the Professor himself, it explores everything bar the murder. Pal Anderson and his existential angst meander from location to location, like some lab rat caught in a maze constantly stumbling over this most mundane of murders. ( )

Prof Andersen, living alone and drinking on Christmas Eve, witnesses a murder, and fails to report it. Much of the rest of the book is his doubt and torment about this, until the end when he reaches a calm state. He is a professor of literature, and we get into some rather essay-ish sections which are presumably the author's own views. These do not really move the action (such as it is) onward and some readers may find them a little too self-indulgent.

Nevertheless, a thoughtful brief book which captures well the unquiet mind of the intellectual. ( )