Actually I haven't finished this book. I've abandoned it. But just as I did so, I looked at pages and pages of Goodreads reviews, all entirely positive. So I will give it another go. Fo the time being, I'm having my usual difficulty with 'seafaring literature'. Though I can recognise the quality in the writing, I can't get engaged somehow. I will persist. But on another day. ( )

Interesting but realistically brutal ( )

We'll never be a family, Albert thought. We're just the wreckage of other families.

What a stunning, heartbreaking, life-affirming, devastating work. We, The Drowned covers 100 years in the life of a Danish town, Marstal, through the sailors and soldiers and their families. Jensen's prose is vivid and poetic, rarely as "simple" as the misguided reviews on the back of the cover say (even if they mean well by it), and always insightful. His characters walk the tightrope of magic realism without ever crossing over into that genre. He renders the complex relationship all lifelong coast-dwellers have with the ocean, immaculately clear.

This book is a very dense tome. At 700 pages, it uses every one of those pages to tease out heavy strands of story and character, so it's definitely not a light read. But We, the Drowned is an immensely rewarding one. There are grand set-pieces - the dehydrated butterflies spring to mind, or the early, strangely optimistic tales of a POW camp - but these are contrasted with simple character tales that elevate the mundane drama above the global events occurring around the characters.

For me, a few of the character revelations toward the end felt a tad obvious - the lead female character develops a highly unpleasant but completely understandable goal, and her late realisation of what she's been doing with her life feels a little forced - but the sheer force of Jensen's skill overwhelms any qualms. A beauty of a book, and a beast of a book, too. ( )

It started off strong. I really liked Laurids, and the description of the battle and the aftermath. I also liked how the author used the collective "we", it was a good writing style. But chapter 2, where it moves on to the town's kids, slowed way down and I lost interest. It probably picks back up but I don't have the energy to scan the book, looking for it to get good again.

I rate up (or down) from 3 stars, but I wish I could give this a perfectly neutral 2.5, for the balance between what I liked and did not. The first 100 pages, I was sustained only by my interest in the first person plural voice. Around 130 a narrative picks up that held me for another 100 or so; then a flat bit, some terribly annoying men, a few chapters of searching for my narrator, some promising bits towards the end, and who knows what else. Here at the end I feel like I've liked it enough, but I remember those earlier phases. Too many things (voice, narrative) needed to be more developed - in any direction, but more committed to that direction. Still I love my Danes and my history and my sea narratives, so I'm rounding up to 3. ( )